


When your heart's crawling its way up your throat all you have to say is...

by ElianFog



Series: Mal's multi-year long midlife crisis [1]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Additional Information in Author's Note, Altered character designs as I saw fit, Autism, Autistic Evie, Carlos has anxiety, Gen, Horror, I'm not actually sure how "graphic" the violence is but I checked that tag to be safe, I'm really just tagging the stuff that has the most blatant presence or warrants a warning, Implied Uma/Harry/Gil, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jay is a trans guy, Mal Being Introspective, Pre-slash Evie/Mal, The Uma/Harry/Gil is more than just implied now, The title makes an implied kind of sense I swear, Trans Character, Uma and Mal are a 'never were but could have been' and the tension is there, but it's not a major part of the story so I'm not putting it under relationships, maybe a little, minor self-harm, traumatized kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-01-16 12:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18521449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElianFog/pseuds/ElianFog
Summary: People on the Isle of the Lost are dying. It should be nothing more than a rumor, but it isn't. It should be a simple fix, but (big surprise!) it isn't. It should be Mal's means of finally finally finally clawing her way into her mother's approval, but... Well, she has to try, anyway.Otherwise known as: When people are dying on the Isle of the Lost, Mal and her friends get involved.(Takes place while the kids are still living on the Isle)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place not too long after the first "Descendants" novel. If you haven't read it, basically Carlos made a machine that made a hole in the barrier around the Isle for a few seconds and then the machine promptly broke. That let enough magic in to wake up Maleficent’s bird and the rest of her castle and she told Mal to retrieve her staff. Que Mal and co. going on a mini adventure and bonding. There were trials tailored to each kid, murderous goblins briefly appeared, Mal grabbed the staff herself even though she thought the curse on it would put her to sleep for 1,000 years (or something like that) instead of letting one of the other kids grab it and Maleficent viewed that as a failure.
> 
> On to specifics for this fic: I’m writing Evie as autistic and Mal has indicators of autism but I’m not sure if there’s enough or if they’re prominent enough that people would consider her to be autistic. I’m writing Jay as having ADHD, though I doubt it really comes out in this fic because my focus is mostly on Mal, Evie, and Uma. I'm also writing him as a trans guy, so casual indicators of that may be dropped in if I can find places for them. Anyways, I’m not autistic, I don’t have ADHD, and I'm not a trans guy (though I am non-binary so I at least have my own perspective on being trans) so if anything feels wrong/bad/offensive let me know and I’ll see what I can do about fixing it.
> 
> Notes for the future fics in this series: There’s going to be 2 short fics followed by a much longer fic that’ll be my own heavily altered (ie. gay and anti-capitalist) version of the first "Descendants" movie. Also! I’m writing Evie as a non-binary lesbian, but in this fic she hasn’t had either of those realizations yet. One of the shorter fics will address at least her lesbianism, I might save her gender exploration for the long fic.
> 
> Okay, long introductory spiel finished, enjoy!

It started as a rumor, something Mal heard from Jay who had overheard it from somebody else while they were talking about how _they’d_ heard it from a friend who’d heard it from a friend who’d heard it from their mom whose cousin was there when it happened. All in all, not very reliable information, a scary story that Jay had relayed with ample theatrics and that Mal had scoffed at, rolling her eyes and shoving at his arm, telling him to stop being so dramatic. He’d laughed, lightly shoving her back, his smile so wide it’d flashed his teeth. Obviously, he hadn’t believed it either.

 

When Mal heard the rumor again, it was from Carlos. He’d run into her at her locker in Dragon Hall, looking genuinely concerned, twitchy in that overly anxious way of his. She’d chalked it up to the typical fear that always seemed to exist just under his surface and, with a dismissive wave of her hand, had told him not to believe everything he heard. He hadn’t looked convinced, his mouth twisting up unhappily, but he hadn’t pushed the matter either, instead simply giving an uneasy nod and slipping away to his next class.

 

By the time Evie mentioned the rumor– she and Mal shut up in Evie’s room at the Castle Across the Way – Mal was officially sick of hearing about it. It seemed to have swept across the island with a vengeance and everywhere Mal turned she swore she could hear the buzz of voices talking about it, nobody having anything better to do than spread the latest gossip. With a groan Mal had dropped back onto Evie’s bed, snatching up a pillow to pull over her head. She’d told Evie that ‘Yes, she’d heard’ and ‘No, she didn’t believe it’ and ‘Obviously it’s made up nonsense, probably from some bored little kids or attention-seeking adults’ and ‘Honestly Evie, can we just stop talking about it already?’ Evie had rolled her eyes, telling Mal she was ‘No fun’ but had ultimately dropped the subject.

 

It wasn’t until the words, “Did you hear about the man that was torn to shreds the other day?” came from her own mother’s lips that Mal felt an icy spike of dread.

 

Mal had just entered kitchen, finally having emerged from her room for the day, and her mother had been standing there, staring contemplatively at the open cupboards. When she’d glanced over, noticing Mal, she’d spoken the words almost conversationally.

 

“You mean that rumor that’s been going around?” Mal hedged, expecting – or hoping – that at any moment Maleficent would burst into laughter and pinch Mal on her cheek, telling her how stupid everyone was being and how stupid Mal, herself, was for looking so worried in that moment.

 

Instead, Maleficent gave a grim shake of her head. “It’s not a rumor, dear. They really did find a man torn apart near the outskirts of the island. I want you to stay away from the forest.” She leveled Mal with a serious look, her green eyes – so similar to Mal’s own but for the monolids that Mal must have acquired from her father – burning into Mal’s, making her feel small as she struggled to hold her mother’s gaze, making her feel like she was suffocating. “Do you understand me?”

 

“Of course,” Mal replied, her voice tight, her fingers beginning to fidget at her sides, dragging her thumb against her index finger at a rapid, anxious pace.

 

“Good.” Maleficent turned away and with a flick of her hand, claw-like black nails stark against her white skin, said, “That’s all I wanted. You can get on with however you usually waste your time.” She huffed a sigh, her focus once again on studying their merger food supplies, her voice trailing off into a mutter as she said, “Half-assing homework or committing vandalism or something.”

 

Mal nodded, though her mother probably wasn’t paying enough attention to notice – her loose, purple curls shifting around her shoulders with it – and promptly high-tailed it out of there, late breakfast completely forgotten. She was barely able to restrain herself from full on dashing to Jafar’s Junk Shop. The low buzz of gossip that engulfed her as she slipped outside, no longer simple nonsense, now seemed to burn her ears and spurred her into moving faster, shoving past people and stepping on toes.

 

When she arrived, she practically dragged Jay out the front door.

 

Jay allowed himself to be pulled along with nothing more than a quick shrug at his father, not asking, “What’s wrong?” until they were outside.

 

Mal released her hold on him but didn’t stop walking, heading in the direction of Evie’s and Carlos’s – she was, frankly, a bit rattled and couldn’t wait for their usual meet-up time to let her friends in on what she’d learned. Jay easily kept pace with her, dragged a hand through his long, black hair, as if her manhandling had somehow managed to put it into disarray.

 

“The rumor’s true,” Mail said, shooting him a glance.

 

He raised an eyebrow, his dark brown eyes filled with blatant disbelief. “ _Seriously_?”

 

“Seriously.”

 

“Mal, you can’t honestly believe-”

 

Mal stopped and grabbed for his shoulder, tugging him down and hissing in his ear, “My mother said it’s true.”

 

When she released Jay, he rose slowly, his stare intent, his brown skin turning a bit pallid. “Really?”

 

“Really.”

 

“You swear you’re not messing around.”

 

“ _No_ , I am _not_ messing around, Jay!” Mal snapped, her patience running out. A second later she deflated, heaving a large sigh and rubbing at the bridge of her nose. “Let’s not talk about this in public, okay? After we get Evie and Carlos we can go to the hideout.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, sure, I…” Jay trailed off and shook his head, pressing a hand over his mouth. “God, Mal,” he breathed, starting to look a bit sick. “You’ve heard what happened to that guy, right? If that’s true, then it’s… it’s really fucked up.”

 

Mal nodded, her own stomach churning as she started walking again, setting a swift pace. The Isle was far from safe, but murder just _didn’t happen_. All everyone on the Isle had was each other and, sure, their community was really nothing more than a lot of bad attitudes shoved into a confined space, but when it came down to it there was an undeniable sense of solidarity among them, even if the only thing that actually united them was a shared hatred of Auradon.

 

Robbery, fights, and vendettas? Common, everyday occurrences. The occasional, non-fatal stab wound? Also nothing to really put up a fuss over.

 

But a death? Especially a brutal one? _That_ was cause for concern.

 

From what Mal had heard, the man had been found covered in large gashes – all over his hands, arms, and face, the deepest of them torn into his stomach – and his torso had been littered with horrific burns. The very thought of it made her shudder, wishing she could go back to thinking of it as nothing more than a fantastical tale.

 

She did her best to push it from her mind as she and Jay weaved their way towards Evie’s.

 

Retrieving Evie was easy, nothing more than a knock at her castle’s decrepit door and a sweet smile for her mother and Grimhilde was disappearing inside, inviting them to follow her, and calling for Evie to come down. Mal and Jay hovered just inside the parlor, waiting for Evie – Jay rocking on the balls of his feet and drumming his fingers on his thighs while Mal pulled at her earlobe and took even, calming breaths, trying to flush the building pressure out of her body.

 

Evie came down the steps a few minutes later, taking them slowly with an open compact in her hand, angled so she could apply bright red lipstick to her lips. She clicked the compact shut as she joined them, shoving it and the lipstick into one of her pockets and bringing with her the faint, sweet smell of the watered-down perfume Mal had stolen for her a couple weeks ago. There was a slight frown on her lips, a bit of a tense edge to the way she was fiddling with the fabric of her jacket, and a question in the furrow of her eyebrows.

 

Mal was aware that Evie wasn’t a fan of sudden disruptions to her usual schedule – not unless she was warned ahead of time anyway – so she was quick to offer an explanation, keeping her voice quiet “Something happened,” she said. “We’re going to get Carlos and talk about it at the hideout.”

 

“You can’t tell me now?” Evie asked, looking from Mal to Jay with rapidly growing concern. “Neither of you are hurt, are you?”

 

“No, we’re not hurt. It’s kind of serious though. I’d feel better waiting until we get to the hideout to tell you about it, so we can talk it over properly.”

 

Evie didn’t exactly look happy about it, but she nodded. “Alright. Let’s get Carlos then.”

 

Carlos, unlike Evie, proved to be a bigger challenge to retrieve. When they arrived, he was hung up with chores. He answered the door frazzled, every inch of him in disarray – sweaty from exertion, sprinkled with dust, and spotted with smears of dirt. He took one surprised look at them then peered anxiously back into the house before facing them again.

 

“Uh, hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

 

“Can you leave?” Mal asked.

 

Carlos raised his eyebrows. “Like, _now_?” In response to Mal’s nod he shook his head, ruffling a hand through the back of his hair. “No, no. _No_ , I’ve got to finish up the dusting and then do the dishes. Why?”

 

Mal eyed him for a few moments, then sighed. “We’ll help. And when we finish, we’re going to the hideout. There’s something we need to talk about.”

 

“Oh, okay, um…” Carlos looked back into the house, pressing his lips together. When he turned back it was with a conflicted expression. “Just… try to be quiet. Please? She’s been drifting in and out of sleep all day and she won’t like it if you wake her up.”

 

The three of them agreed easily, none of them wanting to deal with an irate Cruella and especially not wanting to foist one upon Carlos, and they all but tiptoed into the mansion. They quickly set about the tedious process of helping him finish up the laundry and dusting. By the end of it, Evie and Carlos were coated in a thin layer of dust, sneezing intermittently, and Mal's and Jay's hands were bright red and uncomfortably pruney.

 

The only good thing about it was that it’d really given Mal a chance to slow down and think, scrub her anxiety away with a rough assault on the dishes. It’d let her move past the shock that someone had really been killed, allowed her to clear her head and see things from a detached angle, restoring her usual cool facade.

 

Her mother had warned her to stay away from the forest.

 

That was… different.

 

Maleficent had _never_ wanted her to stay out of trouble, unless that trouble happened to inconvenience Maleficent herself in some way. Mal considered the possibility that her mother was simply worried for her safety, but with a snort and a shake of her head that quickly dissolved into full on laughter that had Jay looking at her like maybe she'd lost it from inhaling soap fumes, she’d dismissed it.

 

Concern for her well-being off the table, it _was_ possible that Maleficent had someone else in mind that she wanted to take care of the issue. Someone like Uma, probably, just to really rub it in Mal's face. Afterall, Maleficent may have entrusted Mal with the retrieval of her staff and Mal may have successfully delivered it, but in the end, she had been undeniably disappointed, if not disgusted, by Mal's performance. Maybe she just didn't want to give Mal another chance to prove herself.

 

The very thought had made Mal's blood boil, a new kind of anxiety gripping at her heart as she’d aggressively scrubbed at a bowl, her mouth twisting into a scowl.

 

It was an anger she’d held onto, no amount of dish scrubbing capable of dispelling it.

 

Once the four of them were finally able to slip away from Cruella's mansion, Evie lamenting over her dust covered everything and effectively drowning out Carlos's questions about what was going on, they went straight to their hideout.

 

Evie threw herself down on the couch, catching a damp rag Carlos tossed to her as he swiftly slipped in and out of their bathroom. Mal swept off into Evie's room to root around her vanity for a comb before coming back out and climbing onto the couch, sitting on the back of it with her legs bracketing Evie. She started dragging the comb through Evie's deep blue hair to get the dust out and Evie leaned her head back against Mal's stomach, closing her eyes. It made Mal’s work more difficult, but she didn’t mind too much and, besides, Evie would always lift her head at the slightest prod when necessary. Jay had taken over the other side of the couch, drawing one of his legs up, and Carlos was curled up on their desk chair, both of his legs tucked under him.

 

“Alright,” Carlos started, looking at Mal. Though his short, black curls with their white tips and his freckled, light brown skin with its patches of white were, like Evie's, also grayed by a coating of dust, he had only cared enough to scrub his face free of it. “Do I get to know what the emergency was now?”

 

“You're not going to like it,” Jay said.

 

“Turns out that rumor about the person that was killed is true,” Mal explained. Evie started in surprise and Mal pulled the comb away, replacing it with her fingers so she could massage calming circles into Evie’s head and gently pull her back into place.

 

“It is?” Evie exclaimed. Her body was tense, but she wasn't fighting Mal's hold. Instead she reached up to grasp the sleeve of Mal's jacket, her long, painted nails digging into the leather.

 

Carlos had noticeably blanched. “Oh, man, does this mean we're all going to die? We’re on an island! There’s nowhere to run!”

 

Mal rolled her eyes. “Yes, it's true. But, no, Carlos, we’re not going to die.” She frowned, her massage turning more into playing with Evie's hair. “My mother basically told me to stay out of it, so I'm pretty sure she's already got someone in mind that she wants to deal with it.”

 

“Why am I sensing a 'but?’” Carlos asked warily. He'd dug a hand into his hair, tugging at the curls, that frantic gleam of fear over his imagined imminent death still in his eyes.

 

“Because, _I_ want to be the one that deals with it.”

 

“What?” Jay and Evie shouted, Carlos sputtering unintelligibly. Jay had shot up from his comfortable slouch and Evie was pulling away so she could turn to look at Mal, both of them sporting concerned frowns.

 

“Look, M,” Jay began, speaking with all the gentleness of a person trying to calm a rabid animal, “I know you’ve got a competitive streak to the moon and back, but, seriously, if Maleficent doesn’t want you involved you should take that for the blessing it is. This is dangerous.”

 

“So was going to my mother’s castle, but I came out of that just fine, didn’t I?”

 

“That was different.”

 

Evie nodded, setting a hand on Mal’s knee. “Jay’s right. That was a retrieval mission, _this_ is something else entirely. Remember the goblins Mal? We _ran_ from those. This would be like running straight towards them.”

 

“You think I can’t handle it?” Mal asked, crossing her arms. She was met with silence – Evie, Jay, and Carlos all avoiding eye contact – and let out a sharp, harsh laugh. “Right. And I bet that’s exactly what my mother thinks, too.”

 

“Mal…” Evie started, but Mal held up a hand, silencing her.

 

“Listen. Someone’s got to take care of it. Why shouldn’t it be me? You guys don’t have to help if you don’t want to, the whole reason I wanted to tell you about the rumor being true in the first place was so you’d know to be careful. But if I’m _ever_ going to prove myself to my mother, I’ve got to take every chance I can get.”

 

A moment passed and then Carlos groaned loudly, slowly slumping over the desk as he said, exasperated, “Of course we’re going to help you.”

 

Evie, looking a bit pained, reached out and grabbed one of Mal’s hands, threading their fingers together and flashing her and unconvincing smile. “Yeah,” she said. “Obviously we will. If you’re really so dead set on it.”

 

From the desk Carlos raised a hand, his face still flat against the wood. “Can we not use the word ‘dead,’ maybe, until this whole thing is over?”

 

“Oh!” Evie blinked. “Good point, don’t want to jinx it, huh? Um, if you’re so…” She pressed her lips together, scanning her brain for an alternative.

 

“How about ‘stubborn?’” Jay supplied. “Or ‘ridiculous?’ Or ‘irrational?’ Or-”

 

“Alright, you’ve made your point,” Mal cut in, glaring at him. He stuck his tongue out at her in retaliation and Mal stuck hers out back, setting off a back and forth that was stopped by Evie placing her fingers on Mal’s chin and guiding Mal’s gaze back to her.

 

An amused expression on her face, Evie settled on, “Determined. If you’re so _determined_ ,” she shot a pointed look at Jay, giggling when he stuck his tongue out at her, too, “obviously we’ll help you. No question about it.”

 

Mal squeezed Evie’s hand. “Thank you.”

 

Evie’s smiled brightly, brushing some of her glossy, blue hair behind her ear. Mal’s fingers itched to go back to touching it so she quickly, and as nonchalantly as possible, sat on them, turning to look over at Jay who raised an eyebrow.

 

Mal cleared her throat. “Anyway. We can go look into what happened tomorrow. Think you all can find some kind of weapon to defend yourself with just in case before then?” There was a chorus of assent and Mal nodded, satisfied. “Great. Then we’ll meet up here, usual time, and head out. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to figure out what’s going on and take down the threat, no problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up at lesbianfog.tumblr.com (especially if you have any suggestions about the specifics in my author's note)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter was set up, this chapter gets things moving more. I do not usually update this quickly, I just already had this chapter finished. Next chapter will be out next Saturday, but anything after that is uncertain.

As it turned out, Mal couldn’t have it so easy.

 

They got to the edge of town just fine, the crowds of people and buildings tapering off until they hit the area not far from the forest. The trees loomed, like a shadow, beyond the few crumbling buildings present this far out – the last vestiges of civilization before the fog that swallowed up the rest of the island. People were milling about; some kids fighting over a rope just outside a house, an older woman watching them – bored – while smoking a cigarette, more kids sitting on a cracked and non-functional fountain, and a small group of people exiting a rundown restaurant.

 

Mal surveyed the area, then set off in the direction of the smoking woman. She had striking red curls tumbling down her shoulders that seemed to wash out her pallid, white skin and a pair of tired brown eyes.

 

She watched them with a wary apathy as they approached.

 

“Hey,” Mal said once she got close enough that she wouldn't have to shout.

 

The woman pulled the cigarette from her lips, slowly exhaling smoke. “What do you kids want? Haven't you heard it's dangerous around here?”

 

“It's dangerous everywhere.”

 

The woman laughed, flicking cigarette ash in Mal's direction. “Don't be stupid.”

 

Mal scowled and Evie came closer, placing a hand on her shoulder.

 

“We were just wondering if you knew anything about the murder that happened,” Evie said, her voice dripping with sweetness.

 

The woman took another drag, shaking her head. “Not sure I would call what happened to those people murder, honestly.” Smoke slipped past her lips, wrapping around the words. “It's more like a slaughter.”

 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Carlos said, gesturing with one of his hands for her to slow down. “ _People_? As in _more_ than one?”

 

The woman nodded. “Yeah. The first guy's gang came around and they all turned up dead by the morning. Other people have come by to check it out, too; same thing happened to them.” She took another drag. Mal could see her fingers trembling, ash tumbling off of her cigarette. “I'd really stay out of that forest if I were you.”

 

“Right,” Jay drawled. He linked arms with Mal, grasping Carlos’s bicep with his other hand and nodded to the woman. “Okay, thank you. We'll think about that.”

 

“Jay-,” Mal began, as he started tugging her away.

 

“Mal,” Jay said, cutting her off. He came to a stop, pulling her in front of him, his hands on her shoulders. “You were listening to that woman, right? This situation has officially gone from bad to worse and I-” He froze, did a double take, then proceeded to stare somewhere past Mal's head.

 

“Oh, seriously?” Carlos muttered, also staring past Mal.

 

“What?” Mal asked, turning – only to get an eye-full of Evie who appeared to be using her body as a barricade, her hands settling on Mal’s shoulder blades as she stared at Jay pleadingly.

 

“Jay, come on,” Evie said, “you had a point. Don't throw it away because of this.”

 

“What _is it_?” Mal demanded, jerking herself out of Jay's and Evie’s grips so she could turn and look behind her.

 

‘It’ turned out to be Uma, her first mate Harry in tow. She was coming out of the restaurant, her blue and black braids falling over her shoulders, her dark brown skin briefly lit by neon as the door shut behind her, and her mouth set in an irritated frown. Harry, behind her, heavy black eyeliner sticking out against his white skin, was looking equally as displeased, tugging his hat off to ruffle his fingers through his short, brown hair.

 

“I knew it,” Mal hissed, her body flush with anger.

 

“Knew what?” Evie asked.

 

She tried to grab Mal’s arm, but Mal pushed past her, Jay falling in at her side.

 

“Mal!” Evie called after them and when that got no response, “ _Jay_!”

 

Mal, quickly closing the distance between herself and Uma, could hear Carlos, his voice heavy with resignation as he said, “I think we need to accept that there’s _no way_ they’re going to let this go now that Uma and Harry are here.”

 

And that? That was _damn right_ where Mal was concerned. Jay, beside her, looked just as interested in knocking them down a few pegs.

 

Mal plastered a large, vicious grin on her face and, holding her arms out in a facsimile of welcome, said, “Shrimpy! What the hell are _you_ doing here?”

 

Uma’s frown twisted into a disgusted grimace as she pulled her attention away from whatever she was saying to Harry and noticed Mal. “Great,” she muttered sarcastically, rolling her eyes as Mal came to a stop in front of her. “This is exactly what I needed right now. Why don’t you go be a stuck-up bitch somewhere else for the day, Mal?”

 

“I don’t think so,” Mal snapped back, crossing her arms. “Are you here for my mother?”

 

Jay glanced over at Mal, raising an eyebrow at her accusation.

 

Uma and Harry, on the other hand, exchanged a look and then burst into laughter.

 

“You really think,” Uma said between the laughs shaking her body, “that I would ever do anything for _your_ mother? Honestly, Mal, I knew you were dumb, but I didn’t think you were _that_ dumb.”

 

Harry threw an arm around Uma’s shoulders, leaning heavily into her and whispering into her ear, causing Uma to snort and shake her head. Harry’s eyes, sparking with amusement, caught Mal’s and she grit her teeth, seething.

 

“Okay,” Jay said. “You’re not here for Mal’s mom. Why _are_ you here then? Because if it’s about the murders, _we’re_ handling it and we don’t need you guys getting involved and messing everything up.”

 

“If anyone should be worried about that, it’s us,” Harry said, shooting Jay a derisive smile.

 

Jay moved to take a step forward, but, apparently sensing the growing tension, Carlos and Evie had joined them, Evie linking arms with Jay and Carlos patting him on the back reassuringly.

 

Mal, personally, was itching for a fight as badly as Jay, but with Evie grasping her hand it didn’t seem like she was being given that option either. She settled for snapping at Uma, her tone dripping with venom as she said, “Well, Uma? Why _are_ you here,” she gestured with her free hand, the movement encompassing their pitiful surroundings, “wasting my time?”

 

Uma huffed out a sigh, the picture of nonchalance except for the slight downward pull at her lips and furrow of her eyebrows. If Mal wasn’t mistaken, it looked almost like genuine concern was leaking through her cracks.

 

“It’s none of your business,” Uma said, “but, yeah, I’m here about the deaths too. Just not for your stupid mother.” Her lips curled back in disgust. “It’s personal. A few of my idiots decided it’d be fun to dare each other to check the place out and they haven’t come back.”

 

Evie gasped, her hand tightening on Mal’s.

 

“Oh,” Mal said, the tension rushing out of her body along with her desire to fight. There was a sick churning in her stomach over having given Uma such a hard time in the first place when she’d been dealing with something so terrible. “Uma…” Mal began, her voice softening, hesitant and more than a little awkward.

 

“Don’t even try Mal,” Uma said, raising a hand for Mal to stop. “I know you don’t really care. Just spare me the pity party and keep out of my way.”

 

Harry squeezed Uma closer to him, shooting Mal a nasty glare.

 

Mal pressed her lips together, glancing over at her friends. Evie and Carlos looked horrified, while Jay looked as awkward as Mal felt. Evie met her gaze, giving her and then Jay a look, as if to say ‘we can’t just do nothing.’

 

Mal turned back to Uma, the sick feeling in her stomach now accompanied by a squirming in her chest and a wild sense of directionlessness. “No, Uma,” Mal said, insistent, “I do care. Honestly, I do. I may not like you, but I’m not-” She shifted, grimacing. “I’m not heartless.”

 

Uma scoffed, her eyes roaming aimlessly as she muttered, almost low enough for Mal to miss, “Isn’t that the whole point?” A sort of hallow venom dripped from her words, as if she wanted to be derisive but couldn’t quite bring herself to really feel it.

 

A beat passed before Uma’s gaze returned to Mal and during it Mal couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

 

What Uma had said was right, after all.

 

Mal had been raised to be heartless, brought up on a diet of rage and cruelty, the only skills fostered in her by any of the adults in her life being those of destruction. Admitting to being anything other than a hardened, soulless leech was a slip and a potentially disastrous, reputation ruining one at that. The very thought of news of it making its way back to Maleficent made Mal’s hands sweat and her breath hitch, but… but she wasn’t sure she really regretted it.

 

With Uma’s eyes back on her, Mal noticed that she looked _tired_ with bags under her eyes, the whites of them slightly bloodshot.

 

It was the sort of look that Mal hadn’t seen since she was 7 or 8, back before she’d gotten around to viciously shoving Uma out of her life.

 

They hadn’t been friends, not quite, not really, but they’d been close enough to it that Maleficent had questioned Mal’s ability to be ruthless, gripping her chin tightly and asking her how she expected become truly powerful if she treated a person who she should be grinding to dust under her heels as an equal. Mal had taken the words to heart and lashed out, playing the prank that had established their rivalry – involving dumping a bucket of shrimp on Uma’s head – and sticking Uma with the nickname “Shrimpy.”

 

It was the sort of look that Mal would see while Uma poked at bruises, quieter than usual, withdrawn. Mal would understand, the kind of understanding that came with phantom aches and helplessness, though she’d never call it that. The kind of understanding that had led to quiet moments, the two of them hidden away in the most obscure places, giving them the time to shake themselves of their shared despondency, to feel right again, before they’d run off, hands linked, to wreak havoc.

 

Sitting side-by-side, pressed tightly together in a hidey-hole about the size of a cubby, with Uma’s head resting on her shoulder, Mal, prodding at her own bruises, had once broken that typical silence to say, softly, almost unconsciously, more a robotic echo than anything truly impassioned, “We just have to be better.”

 

Uma had shaken her head, her braids ticking Mal’s arm. “Don’t say that,” she’d grumbled.

 

“But-”

 

Uma had lifted her head, glaring at Mal. “Don’t.” Her mouth had twisted up, then she’d huffed out a breath. Her voice was tight when she’d said, “How much better are we supposed to be? Because if you ask me, we’re both trying _really hard_. What else do they need?”

 

Mal had frozen, opened her mouth, shut it again, felt like her throat was closing up. She hadn’t known what to say at the time. She still wouldn’t know what to say now, though she still stood by her belief that she had to be better, had to try harder. Regardless, even if she had ever come up with an answer it wouldn’t have mattered. She and Uma had stopped really speaking to each other, with the exception of barbed insults, by the next week.

 

Seeing that look on Uma’s face again, after so many years, brought out a heavy nostalgia in Mal that made the sick feeling in her stomach roil, a feeling that just got stronger when she realized the threat of friendship – the whole reason she’d destroyed what she’d had with Uma in the first place – wasn’t even something she was avoiding anymore, not since that trip to Maleficent’s castle when she’d realized, despite everything she’d been taught, that the concept may have value after all. Enough value to hesitantly and surreptitiously pursue it with Jay, Evie, and Carlos, anyway.

 

Mal considered, for the first time since she’d committed the act that had driven Uma away from her, that listening to her mother and cruelly asserting herself over Uma may not have been the right decision. She’d had doubts in the immediate aftermath, but then her mother had laughed and patted her on the head and, taken in by the glow of self-satisfaction, she hadn’t thought about it since.

 

There was certainly no changing the way things had gone down, but the least Mal could do was not mess up here, not in the face of Uma’s pain over her lost people.

 

She could be polite and tactful.

 

She _could_.

 

Mal did her best to hold Uma’s gaze as she spoke, repeatedly glancing away, but always forcing her eyes to circle back. “Even if being heartless _is_ the point, I think the circumstances warrant some kind of reaction. What’s happening is messed up and I do care. Whether you think I’m actually capable of it or not.”

 

Uma hummed thoughtfully. Unlike Mal, her gaze was unflinching – though they were both well-aware that Mal didn’t keep looking away because of nerves, Mal’s discomfort with eye contact being common knowledge, especially for anyone she’d ever been close to.

 

“What if we team up?” The question, taking everyone off guard and thoroughly breaking through the tension, came from Carlos.

 

They all turned to look at him, varying degrees of skeptical and incredulous. He took half a step back under the weight of their combined stares, ducking his head and holding up a hand.

 

“I, uh,” a nervous breath of a laugh slipped out, his fingers curling as he slowly lowered his hand, “I know how it sounds. But hear me out, okay?” He pressed his lips together, his gaze flicking up, and when no one immediately jumped in to tear his idea down he hurried to continue. “See, we both want the same thing, right? To stop more of these deaths from happening? Even if our motivations are different it… it can’t go on. And we have a better chance if we work _together_ instead of working around each other. Don’t you think?”

 

Mal and Uma looked at each other, everyone else’s attention bouncing back and forth between them.

 

Uma’s eyes were cold and calculating when she nodded.

 

“Alright,” Uma said. Her hand came up to where Harry’s was resting on her shoulder, twining their fingers together. “I’ll let you all help us. But you had _better_ not slow us down.”

 

Mal scowled, swallowing an acerbic retort as Evie squeezed her hand, settling instead for rolling her eyes and ignoring the bait. Mal could understand Uma’s thirst for a fight – knew she’d feel the same way if her friends were missing right now – but she wasn’t going to give her one. Not under these circumstances.

 

“So, what?” Mal asked, pushing the whole impromptu team-up along. “Are we just going to go into the woods and check it out? Or did you have any other ideas?”

 

Mal was fairly certain she heard Carlos mutter, “ _Please_ have other ideas,” under his breath and looked over to see that he’d gone pale. Fair enough, given that the only information they’d gotten had been vague and rather damning.

 

Uma raised her eyebrows and proceeded to hit the nail right on the head. “Your investigation hasn’t turned up anything better to go off of?”

 

Frowning in mild annoyance, Mal shook her head. “No. Did yours?” She gestured behind them, towards the restaurant Uma had emerged from.

 

“Unfortunately, no.”

 

They both turned to look at the forest. The fog seemed to be leaking out of it, like a slowly bleeding wound.

 

A sense of apprehension settled over the group.

 

Uma sighed, resigned, her body language lax though her expression was pinched, and patted the sword at her hip. “You guys got protection?”

 

“Yeah.” Mal indicated the daggers strapped to her thighs. Uma eyed them doubtfully but didn’t say anything.

 

Evie matched Mal, with holsters borrowed from Mal hidden under the folds of her skirt, over her leggings. Jay was carrying a bag they’d stuffed with flash grenades that Carlos had made, a project he’d thrown himself into after that close call with the goblins at Maleficent’s castle, and a hand ax that Jay had tossed in for good measure. Unlike the rest of them, Carlos was not in possession of any weapons. He’d been forbidden from engaging in whatever fighting might occur, being two years too young and at least a foot too short for any of his friends to condone him facing off against a murderer. His job was strictly to stick close, assist with the investigation, and run off for help if things went to hell.

 

“Great,” Uma said. “Let’s head out, then. It’s starting to get late and I don’t want to be out there after the sun’s set.”

 

Uma and Mal fell into step, more or less, a gap big enough for three people spanning between them. Harry was trailing a few steps after Uma, Uma having slipped from his grip when she set out, looking like he wanted to grasp onto her again but didn’t think it’d be welcome. Evie was still holding Mal’s hand and Jay had thrown an arm across Carlos’s shoulders.

 

They passed by not far from the smoking woman, the scent of her cigarette still heavy in the air though it was now crushed beneath her worn heels. Her hands were shoved deep in her pants pockets and she was watching them, idly, apathetically. Just as they were going to walk around a building, cutting the women from Mal’s sight, their eyes properly caught and the woman, shaking her head in disapproval, saluted Mal, like a final farewell.

 

Mal gave her the finger back.

 

Turning around, the last thing Mal heard as they left the little town behind was one of the children fighting over the jump rope yelling, “If you don’t give me a turn, I swear, I’ll tie you up while you’re sleeping, drag you out to the forest, and let the monster eat you!” The words sent a slight shudder down her back, fog pawing at her limbs, the forest looming in front of her.

 

Monster…

 

God, she really hoped it wasn’t a monster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up at lesbianfog.tumblr.com


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of that promised violence this chapter.
> 
> Wasn't really able to write much last week, probably won't be able to write much this coming week. But! We'll see what happens. Best case scenario: the next chapter is out next Saturday. Worst case scenario: I make you wait a month.

They’d been wandering for about an hour.

 

Harry had apparently quickly gotten bored of shadowing Uma, or maybe Jay had just posed too tempting of a target, because he’d latched onto Jay within minutes and proceeded to practically talk his ear off the whole time. Jay had shaken him off more than once, roughly jostling Carlos when he did so – to Carlos’s obvious annoyance – since Jay was still holding onto him, but after a brief retreat Harry kept coming back like a persistent, clingy octopus.

 

It was attention-hungry behavior and Harry had always been particularly ravenous.

 

He usually turned to Uma, despite her off and on touch aversion, and Gil to deal with it, but he was wasn’t above taking what he needed from _anyone_ that would let him.

 

The hunger was, to varying degrees, relatable to Mal and the rest of her group and, with the exception of Evie was picky about who she was comfortable touching, they’d all grudgingly accepted his tactile nature during their more civil, strictly verbal, spats. Because of that, it wasn’t a surprise to Mal that Jay, despite how he kept making a show of shoving Harry away, had yet to explicitly tell him to stop.

 

It was all about the delicate balance of giving permission without losing face, showing compassion without letting it appear that way to the anyone who wasn’t in the know.

 

It was a high-stakes game that all the second-generation villains had developed, centered around the rule that they _couldn’t let the adults find out_. A game Mal had engaged in with Uma earlier, albeit perhaps without the level of subtlety she should have, and that Jay was engaging in with Harry now. All the isle kids knew the subtleties, the language, the on-going negotiation. They also knew that even the slightest slip up around their parents could result in the whole thing going up in flames because, while gangs were allowed and rivalry was encouraged, kindness of any sort would never be tolerated.

 

Watching the act play out between Jay and Harry, Mal couldn’t help but turn to stare at Uma, stomping ahead of all of them with purpose, sharp and bristling. It set off that itch under Mal’s skin again, but she forced herself to ignore it. If Uma didn’t want Harry around right now, there was no way in hell she’d want Mal.

 

Instead she focused on their progress and scanning their surroundings.

 

The grass was near dead under her feet, crunching slightly with each step, and practically overrun with weeds. The trees surrounding them were gnarled, their leaves perpetually yellowing at the edges. An occasional skittering could be heard, small voracious animals moving about just out of Mal’s sight.

 

The forest itself wasn’t overly large, but it was dense. It covered maybe a third of the isle, roughly four hours from end to end at a steady clip if you could avoid getting lost. In an effort to prevent that from happening, their group was walking at an angle, intending to persist until they hit the cliff-face that marked the coast. They were then planning on following it back down the gradual incline until they got to the beach about two miles from the little town they’d started in.

 

As far as Mal could tell, nothing had changed the entire time they’d been walking. Their surroundings were practically monotonous and the only sources of entertainment were Harry, who was talking so loudly Mal swore he wanted the entire forest to hear, and Evie, who kept up a steady chatter to Mal, at a much more reasonable volume, about her recent clothing projects and what she was thinking about doing with her hair and the new concepts they were learning in their science class.

 

Evie, at least, was a sight to see, bouncing as she walked – and somehow still more easily avoiding tripping over tree roots than Mal was – rocking up on the balls of her feet before popping back down, her mouth curled into a faint smile as she talked, and her thumb rubbing a distracting back and forth across Mal’s glove-covered knuckles while her other hand threw out gestures for emphasis.

 

She was so lively and bright that Mal couldn’t help but think that she practically made their dreary backdrop sparkle.

 

It was almost painful to look away from her, but Mal made sure to do so every few minutes so she could keep up her vigilance. She would scan their surroundings, pause on Uma, feel that itch rising up to fester inside of her, and, finally, drag her eyes back to Evie; rinse and repeat.

 

It was during one of those quick scans that Mal realized it was getting noticeably darker, more shadows encroaching on them.

 

Frowning, she came to a stop. Evie, having gotten jerked to one with her because of their linked hands, looked at her curiously, but Mal was busy looking ahead of them. She couldn’t see the cliff-face, the fog and trees too thick, but they had to be getting close, otherwise they’d end up being stuck out here after the sun had set.

 

“Do you think we should speed up?” Evie asked, following Mal’s gaze. A cool breeze swept by, ruffling her hair, and she brushed it behind her ear, curing her fingers into the ends it.

 

Mal drew a hand up and set to tapping on her collarbone. “I don’t know,” she muttered.

 

Uma was the one who’d pointed out that they shouldn’t stay out after dark in the first place, but she didn’t seem to want to stop the search anytime soon, still striding ahead with purpose. And Mal wanted to solve the mystery just as badly for her own reasons.

 

She looked up at the sky for a few seconds, futilely trying to get a read on the sun’s position, then shook her head. “It’s fine, probably, for a few more minutes.”

 

She looked at Evie, wordlessly seeking a second opinion, and received a smile.

 

“Sounds good to me,” Evie agreed easily. “I do think we should get out of here soon, though.” The fingers in her hair started tugging as apprehension twinged at the set of her mouth, her gaze shifting restlessly around them. “I’m starting to get a bad feeling.”

 

Mal reached out, gently untangling Evie’s hand from her hair. “Alright,” she murmured, lightly massaging the tips of her fingers into the abused part of Evie’s scalp, causing Evie’s eyes to flutter and a soft hum to rise up in her throat.

 

“Hey, guys?” Mal called out, much louder, half-turning towards the rest of them, her hand slipping down to rest on Evie’s shoulder. “I think we should speed up in a few minutes if we don’t see the cliff; it’s about time that we should be heading back. We’ll come again tomorrow if we need to.”

 

“You got it Mal!” Jay called, flashing her a thumbs up.

 

There was no answer from Uma, but Mal figured that was as close to agreement as she was going to get.

 

As the seconds crept by, turning to minutes, Uma’s body grew more and more tense, her movements turning jagged. Harry grew quiet and gravitated back over to her, his cheeriness sliding away in the face of his own aggravation.

 

The tension building around the two of them came to a head when the cliff came into view, just barely visible through the haze of the fog. Mal didn’t even have a second to feel relieved that they hadn’t gotten themselves lost, or annoyed that they hadn’t found anything, before Uma was slamming the side of her fist into the nearest tree, a frustrated scream ripping itself from her throat.

 

“Where _are_ you!?” Uma shouted, whipping her head around furiously, her other hand coming up to rest on the hilt of her sword. “Come out! You _coward_!”

 

Harry went up to her, sweeping up the hand she’d hit the tree with and examining it, his lips pressed into a thin line. Seemingly satisfied that Uma hadn’t broken anything and wasn’t bleeding, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles and leaned forward to whisper to her, his words too quiet for Mal to pick up on even if she’d wanted to.

 

Uma’s heaving chest began to slow, her composure slipping back into place. She gripped the back of Harry’s neck and knocked their temples together, then nodded, once, the shallowest movement of her head, and they separated.

 

Uma cleared her throat, rolling her shoulders, leaned back against the tree as if she hadn’t just hit it. “Sorry about that.”

 

“Don’t be,” Mal said, softly, a grinding, tired, sick feeling in her chest as she looked at Uma and her forced calm. “I get it.”

 

No leads, no mysterious murderer offering themself up, and Uma’s people still missing, presumably dead.

 

No solution or revenge in sight.

 

Mal could understand the need to blow off some steam, the need to break down a little, the need to fall apart.

 

Uma crossed her arms, frowning at Mal, like she was some sort of weird puzzle that she just couldn’t figure out.

 

And Mal… Mal got that, too, she supposed.

 

She shifted awkwardly under the scrutiny, knew she wasn’t behaving like she was supposed to be, knew she’d drawn a line in the sand when they were kids and that she was flagrantly crossing it again and again today. Dangerously.

 

Downright selfishly.

 

Ultimately, Uma let her eyes flicker away and with a shake of her head, muttered, “Sure, whatever,” setting off for the cliff. “Let’s just get out of here.”

 

She’d barely taken three steps when a growl began to emanate from around them.

 

Uma froze. She slowly turning back around, her eyebrows furrowed.

 

The growl stretched on for a few moments more while they all stared at each other, Carlos and Evie looking increasingly freaked out with each passing second. Mal swore she could feel the growl vibrating in her chest.

 

When it finally cut off there was a couple beats of silence, all of them holding their breaths, before Carlos spoke.

 

“What,” he squeaked quietly, his voice barely intelligible and his eyes wide, “was _that_.”

 

“I don’t know,” Mal replied, the words coming out of her mouth at a crawl.

 

Her grip tightened on Evie’s hand and Evie, who had gone unnaturally still, burst into motion at the feeling, bouncing on the balls of her feet and shoving a knuckle between her teeth, biting down on the flesh as her head flew back and forth. She started forward, tugging Mal along with her.

 

“E?” Mal asked, startled as she stumbled after her. “Evie, what’s wrong?” Sure, the growl had been scary, but the six of them could deal with a wild animal. Probably.

 

A small pause, then, “Wrong,” Evie replied. She linked arms with Jay when they reached him and started pulling him along, too, Carlos coming with him.

 

Jay shot Mal a look and Mal shrugged back, her eyebrows furrowing. She couldn’t tell if Evie’s response was a simple echo or meant to be an answer to her question.

 

The growling started up again, flooding Mal’s chest once more, raising the hairs on the back of her neck and on her arms, coiling itself around the stuttering of her heart. And that… yeah that felt pretty _wrong_ to her, actually.

 

Deciding that Evie _had_ been trying to answer her, and her own anxiety about the situation growing, Mal put more effort into getting to the clearing, matching Evie’s fast pace as best she could with her shorter legs.

 

“Okay, yeah. Something’s seriously not right,” Mal said, as they approached Uma and Harry. “We need to go.”

 

“Need to go,” Evie echoed vehemently, nodding. “ _Need to go_.”

 

Uma looked conflicted, but nodded, grabbing Harry and swiftly stalking off ahead of Mal and her friends.

 

“What do you think it is?” she called over her shoulder.

 

“I don’t know. Something bad,” Mal replied

 

“When you say _bad_ -” Jay started, but before he could finish Carlos gasped loudly, cutting him off.

 

Mal, Evie, and Jay all whipped around to look at him. He was staring at a cluster of towards their right, craning his head as they ducked around the trees in their path.

 

“Wait, stop, I saw something!” he exclaimed.

 

They were barely 15 feet from the edge of the forest.

 

Barely 15 feet.

 

If they could just get out, they could take off in a sprint towards safety and not have to worry about getting lost while they were at it.

 

Mal gritted her teeth, glaring at the edge of the tree-line, so close she could almost grasp it, and stopped, she and Carlos anchoring Evie and Jay.

 

“Carlos! Mal!” Jay said, looking between the two of them incredulously. “Seeing something is more reason to _go_ , not _stay_!”

 

Ignoring Jay, Mal asked, “Where did you see it?” She tried to follow the direction of Carlos’s gaze, squinting. All she could see were trees and shadows, distorted by the fog. A quick look back at the tree-line showed her Uma and Harry hovering just past it, backlit in the orange glow of the setting sun, their swords drawn.

 

“A few feet ahead of us,” Carlos whispered.

 

The growling cut off and Mal wasn’t sure if that made the situation better or worse. All she could hear now was their breathing.

 

They stood still, hyper-vigilant.

 

Mal reached down, grabbing a knife from her holster. “Jay,” she whispered.

 

“Already on it,” Jay replied, the sound of a zipper from the bag he was carrying rippling through the air as he spoke.

 

There was the faint clinking of Carlos’s flash bombs. Then something… odd in the near distance. Mal’s eyebrows furrowed, her ears straining. It sounded like… Sort of like…

 

Sizzling…

 

Before she could ask if anyone else could hear it a black snout emerged from the group of trees Carlos’s eyes were still locked on. He gasped again, louder this time, flinching into Jay.

 

“It’s-it’s a dog,” Carlos stammered. His eyes, if possible, had gotten even wider, more crazed and his breath was hitching, quickly on his way to hyperventilating. Jay had slipped out of Evie’s hold to wrap both arms securely around Carlos, but it didn’t seem to be doing much to calm him down.

 

“We have to run,” Jay said, not taking his eyes off the animal.

 

A paw had appeared, claws probably the size of Mal’s knife spearing into the ground, and with it the rest of the animal’s head.

 

It was ghastly.

 

Red eyes set deeply into its skull, overly large and bottomless. It’s pointed ears were pulled back, a snarl on its snout, sharp teeth. It emerged the rest of the way from the trees and seemed to quiver in the fog, like smoke. It was stretched and emaciated, its limbs exaggerated and grotesque.

 

It was staring right at them, right at _Mal_ , with a hatred that seared Mal to her core.

 

“Yeah,” Mal said, agreeing with Jay on autopilot. She felt numb, nothing around quite reaching her except those red, red, red eyes, the only real thing in her sharply narrowing world.

 

“I’ve got Carlos.” She could still hear Jay talking, but she wasn’t quite sure she was processing it right. The words didn’t seem to mean anything. “I’m going to throw one of the flash bombs. On the count of three: _go_.” He didn’t wait for conformation.

 

On ‘one’ Mal could hear him tossing Carlos over his shoulder, on ‘two’ he threw out a flash bomb, and then he was yelling out “Three!” and Mal still hadn’t looked away from the creature, couldn’t even fathom the act of moving.

 

She was saved from the being momentarily blinded by Evie’s hand flying in front of her eyes, but that red clung to the darkness, to the backs of her eyelids, swimming in her vision like an afterimage.

 

The creature growled, rough and vicious, and, like the snap of a rubber band, Mal could feel her body again, the growl vibrating through her bones. She shook her head, trying to knock out the remnants of her paralysis, Evie’s hand still pressed tightly over her eyes. She realized, belatedly that they were moving, Evie behind her, her body pressed to Mal’s back and her other hand on Mal’s shoulder, manually pushing her forward.

 

Mal tore Evie’s hand from her eyes, took a stumbling step away from her.

 

“I’m fine,” she mumbled, admittedly still a bit dazed.

 

Jay and Carlos were ahead of them and she couldn’t see the creature. Then, Evie was back to pushing at her and she was taking another stumbling step away and settling into a jog, shaking her head again, her skin tingling and blood singing. She picked up the pace.

 

She was zeroing in on the figures of Uma and Harry, a clear destination to focus her muddled head on, when she heard a scream. She whipped around, spotting Evie splayed out under the creature, its body glinting like an angry fire in the sunset. Evie’s head was thrown back, her body thrashing, the scream tearing its way out of her throat one of soul wrenching agony.

 

Without thinking Mal threw herself at the creature, tackling it off of Evie, a scream slipping from her own mouth an instant later as she understood what had been causing Evie so much pain.

 

It _burned_.

 

The creature was hot – white hot – searing hot, its body like a furnace. Mal swore her skin had to be bubbling, but she grit her teeth, so forcefully she would have feared they’d crack if she had the brain-space to worry about that, and held onto the creature tighter, digging her knees and toes into the ground and trying her best to keep it pinned under her. It flailed wildly, one of its eyes catching Mal’s, the hatred once again swallowing her whole, making her choke, as the creature howled.

 

Mal blinked and a pair of hands were holding down the creature at its shoulders, helping her.

 

Her ears were ringing.

 

She looked over and saw Uma, who was cursing profusely, jabbing a knee between where her hands were pressing to put more of her weight on the creature, the pain probably making it hard for her to hold on.

 

Another blink and Jay was in front of them, at the creature’s head, the hand ax he’d brought along swinging down. It sliced through the creature’s neck with ease, the body reforming around it as if incorporeal.

 

“ _Shit_ ,” Jay hissed.

 

Mal agreed with the sentiment.

 

The dull sense that this was _it_ was really starting to set in when the creature stilled, it’s head cocking, ears twitching, nose snuffling. Then, between one moment and the next, it was gone, Mal’s body thumping down to the ground in a cloud of vapor.

 

She felt dizzy, light-headed; her hands, arms, and thighs were going numb and she didn’t think that was a good sign. She hazily looked at Uma, then Jay, then, her stomach roiling, she turned away and vomited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up at lesbianfog.tumblr.com


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know. 1. The scene shifts in this one might be awkward. 2. It's hard to tell if I’m keeping stable characterizations when I’m writing characters dealing with problems because the dynamics are actively shifting. 3. I swear nothing played out the way I initially expected it to. And 4. I've looked it over multiple times now and it's starting to sound numb to me so I can't edit anymore today but I also don't want to wait longer to publish it, so. Here we are!
> 
> I suppose as a warning, Uma goes off and she makes good points, but she also victim blames because she's lashing out, so that scene is intentionally conflicting. Also, casual mention of periods in relation to Jay. I talk more about him in the end notes if you're curious.

Mal wasn’t conscious for the trip out of the forest. She came to in a cramped bedroom, laid out on a bed with no memory of blacking out. She groaned and shifted, trying to sit up, her body throbbing with bright, sharp pain. Her limbs were, decidedly, not numb anymore.

 

Another groan as she was being forcibly jerked upright by a rough hand tightly grasping her shoulder and a bucket was being shoved into her chest. She looked up, dazed and panting from the pain, to see the red-haired woman from the town standing over her. Her mouth was terse, her eyes cold.

 

“If you’re going to throw up, do it in the bucket,” she said.

 

Mal stared at her for a few moments, her brain moving at a sluggish pace, then nodded. “I’m not going to throw up,” she said, her voice rasping out of her sore throat, though she wasn’t actually sure it was true.

 

The woman hummed in acknowledgement, her head tilting a bit to the side, then she stepped away from the bed and slipped out of the room. With her no longer taking up Mal’s line of sight, Mal could see Uma sitting in a chair near the end of the bed. Her hands were bandaged, the pant leg of her injured leg cut away, the burn on her knee covered in a salve and still needing to be wrapped.

 

Mal let her arms hang over the bucket, the rim cutting into the unburned backs of them. Her jacket and shirt had been removed, her arms and torso already bandaged. The lower half of her body was hidden under a thin blanket, but she assumed the burns on her thighs must have been taken care of too.

 

“What happened?” Mal asked Uma, her voice breaking the quiet that had settled over them in the woman’s absence.

 

Uma stared at Mal for a moment, then sighed, leaning back in her chair, her injured hands dropping uselessly to her sides. “Well, that _thing_ vanished for some reason and then you passed out. Harry carried you on the way back. Evie wasn’t as badly hurt, but she was going a bit catatonic, which,” Uma shrugged, “fair enough, so Jay ended up needing to carry her, too.” A pause and Uma’s attention seemed to waver, softly muttering, “Granted, we probably would have had him carry her even if she’d been capable. Can’t imagine walking wouldn’t have aggravated the injuries on her thighs.”

 

Mal winced, anxiety clawing at her insides and sticking in her throat. “But you said she was okay, right?”

 

Uma blinked at the interruption then shook her head a bit, refocusing. “Yeah, I mean. She’s got some burns and gashes on her thighs and near one of her shoulders, but you launched yourself at that _thing_ so fast she’s not nearly as bad off as she could have been. The injuries on her chest are the worst.”

 

It made sense – Evie’s shirt was cotton, not leather like her leggings, so of course her injuries would be worse there. Mal made a mental note to get her some material for a decent jacket.

 

Uma sighed again, reaching up as if to pinch the bridge of her nose, but freezing when she remembered the state of her hands. Her mouth curled into a scowl and she dropped her hand back to her side. “Malva boozed Evie up for her pain, but, honestly, I think Evie was a lot more freaked out about potentially being scarred than she was actually _hurt_. You, on the other hand,” Uma glanced Mal over, “your burns were bad. A lot worse than Evie’s. Must have been because of the sustained contact.”

 

“Explains why I feel like I’ve been trampled a few times,” Mal mumbled, only partially joking.

 

It earned a half smile from Uma, and then her gaze was falling to her lap. “Anyway, we went back to that town we started in because it was nearby and we needed medical attention. Malva took us in. She was kind of a bitch about it, but she’s treating our wounds anyway so, whatever, I guess. Besides,” Uma’s smile shifted into a smirk, her tone turning amused, “she might think we’re all stupid for going into the forest in the first place, but she’s pretty obviously a lot more annoyed at _you_ than me so I can’t complain too much.”

 

Mal wrinkled her nose. Of _course_ the woman – Malva – was most annoyed with her, specifically. “Yeah, well, I did flip her off,” she muttered, scowling down at her bandaged arms and the bucket resting between her legs. The care, however brash, juxtaposed itself with Malva’s sarcastic farewell in Mal’s head, making her feel confused. Given how they’d parted Mal would have thought Malva would have sooner left her for dead, viewing it as her getting what she deserved for her foolishness, then waste supplies on her.

 

Uma snorted softly. Mal looked up to see her shoulders shaking and then she was dissolving into laughter. “ _She_ was the person you did that to? That’s _perfect_.”

 

Mal stiffened and glared at Uma. “First of all,” she began, defensive, “she was patronizing me.”

 

At that Uma started laughing louder. “Sensitive much?” she asked, taunting or teasing, Mal couldn’t tell which.

 

Either way, Mal looked at her, incredulous. “Don’t try to act like you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing.”

 

“I’m not acting. I _wouldn’t_ have.” Uma’s laughter had died out, but she was still grinning. “Some of us know better than to pick fights we don’t need to have. Why so angry all the time Mal?”

 

“I’m not angry all the time.”

 

Uma cocked her head to the side, raising an eyebrow questioningly. “You sure about that?” she asked, her tone soft and, surprisingly, genuinely curious. “I didn’t say it had to be directed outwards.”

 

Mal faltered momentarily, the statement not sitting quite right with her, but she didn’t let her voice waver as she said, “Positive. You know most of the adults around here don’t deserve our respect. And I’m still not sure Malva does.”

 

The second the words left Mal’s mouth Uma’s smile crashed, her expression closing off. “Most, huh?” The question was sharp, downright derisive. “Gotta say, Mal, even though I know exactly what you’re like, somehow you still manage to disappoint. I really need to lower my standards for you all the way to the ground, don’t I?”

 

That sick feeling was back under Mal’s skin, filling up her stomach, but before she could argue or ask Uma what she meant, Malva was sweeping back into the room. She had a mostly empty glass bottle in one hand, a cup in the other, and was fumbling the stopper out of the bottle. The liquid in the bottle, a watered-down amber, had to be the aforementioned booze. The stopper was dropped on top of a cluttered dresser and a decent amount of the alcohol was poured into the cup before the bottle was also set down.

 

As soon as that was settled, Malva walked over and held the cup out to Mal with a casual, “Drink up.”

 

Mal looked at the cup, then down at her arms. She raised one of them and— yeah, bending it was _not_ going to happen – a burst of pain had sparked along her arm and made her gasp, her fingers trembling from it.

 

“Can’t,” Mal grumbled, gently lowering her arm back onto the bucket. “Even if I could get the cup to my mouth, I think I’d drop it.”

 

“Naturally,” Malva muttered under her breath, absentmindedly reaching up to brush some of her curls behind her ear. She took a couple steps closer to the bed and pressed the cup to Mal’s lips. “Drink. Quickly. I want to finish up dressing your friend’s wounds.”

 

Mal raised her eyebrows at the assumption that Uma was her friend and opened her mouth to protest it, but Malva took that as an invitation to start pouring. Mal choked a bit on the booze as it went down. Even liberally mixed with water it assaulted her tongue, burning her raw throat and settling hot in her stomach.

 

As Mal suffered Malva’s bedside care, Uma spoke up, an annoyed, “We are _not_ friends.”

 

Malva hummed, clearly uninterested, and kept slowly pouring the alcohol down Mal’s throat. “Whatever you say.”

 

When the cup was empty, she took it from Mal’s lips, then grasped Mal’s chin with her free hand, grip firm but surprisingly gentle. Mal fixed her eyes on Malva’s forehead as she was stared at, studied.

 

“How do you feel?” Malva asked. She tilted Mal’s head from side-to-side, as if looking for some visual indication of her pain status.

 

Mal shrugged. “Everything hurts.”

 

Malva nodded, releasing Mal. “Hopefully the alcohol will help with that. It should be more effective than the meds I have at least.” She then reached out, dragging her fingers through Mal’s hair, startling her. Mal instinctively jerked away from the foreign touch, not realizing until a beat later that Malva had meant it to be soothing, a gesture Mal could vaguely recall seeing a parent do with a crying child once or twice, between siblings a bit more often.

 

Malva’s hand hovered near Mal’s head for a moment, her gaze resting so heavily on Mal she could practically feel it, before it slowly fell away. Mal stared down at her lap, embarrassed and frustrated and still in so much pain, but she could hear when Malva turned away, could feel when her eyes lifted from her body. Mal only looked up after she was certain Malva was engrossed in wrapping Uma’s knee.

 

After finishing up with Uma, Malva gathered up the cup and alcohol, telling them she was going to check on the food she’d started. On her way out the door she said, “I’ll see what I can do about sorting out sleeping arrangements.”

 

“Sleeping arrangements?” Mal asked as the door clicked shut, shooting Uma a look of confused disbelief.

 

“Believe me, we’ve all already had this conversation,” she replied. “Malva doesn’t want us leaving until she’s sure we’re not going to keel over the second we’re out of sight. She said she doesn’t want her supplies and the effort she put into patching us up to go to waste.”

 

Mal’s eyebrows furrowed and she stared at the door, as if it could give her answers. “This is weird, isn’t it? Her helping us out this much? Any other adult would have told us to suck it up and help ourselves or, if they were feeling charitable, maybe thrown us some gauze before slamming their door in our faces. Right?”

 

Uma’s chair creaked as she leaned back, crossing her arms. “It’s almost like she might actually deserve to be in that category of adults you respect,” she replied, her words thrumming with an undercurrent of malice.

 

Mal felt a spark of annoyance. “You’re seriously telling me you see her as someone to look up to?”

 

“No, I’m saying she’s halfway decent and that’s rare around here,” Uma snapped back.

 

“Since when does being decent matter?”

 

Uma’s jaw was clenched tight, her fingers twitching at her sides. “You know what? I don’t want to talk about this.”

 

“No, come on, _what_ is your _problem_?” Mal threw out an arm, ignoring the pain that shot through it. “If I’m going to look up to someone they’re going to be competent and conniving and vicious, not some cryptic emergency medic who thinks she’s better than me just because she told me not to go into that damn forest! At least we were trying to solve the problem! It looks like her big idea was to just sit around doing nothing!”

 

Uma huffed out a breath, her body positively trembling with rage. “You want to know what my _problem_ is? My _problem_ is that when it comes to your stupid fucking mother you’re _still_ a mindless drone! It’s crazy how you idolize that woman! And don’t you dare try to deny it; it’s obvious _she’s_ the exception to you ‘most adults don’t deserve respect’ rule. And for what? What has she ever done for you? At least Malva tried to give you advice and patched you up when we dragged you back here.”

 

“Maleficent is just trying to make me better.” The word – better – curled off of Mal’s tongue, sending her careening into nostalgia. Only, the scene was distorted and this time around Mal couldn’t see an ounce of comfort or solidarity in sight.

 

“Better?” Uma scoffed. “Mal, your head is so twisted up she could tell you that ‘better’ meant jumping off the top of Bargain Castle and you’d do it.”

 

“I wouldn’t,” Mal responded, but it felt automatic, hallow, her conviction seeping from her body like the blood she could see starting to stain her gauze.

 

“And what about your friends?” Uma continued, plowing right over Mal’s objection. “You act like you’re so different now, but if your mother told you to do the same sort of thing to them that you did to me, you’d do it, wouldn’t you?” Her lips contorted in disgust as she spat out, “If she told you it was for your _benefit_ and she’d be _so proud_ you’d drop them in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you?”

 

“I…I…” Mal stammered, taken aback. She wanted to deny it, to tell Uma she was being ridiculous, but found that she couldn’t. Her fingers began drumming on the bucket, a rapid, sporadic, desperate tempo. She could feel her heart constricting, her chest caving in on itself.

 

“That’s what I thought,” Uma muttered, but she didn’t sound triumphant. She sounded tired.

 

Another silence descended, this one distinctly uncomfortable.

 

Mal’s fingers kept tapping. Her chest hurt; her whole body still hurt. She felt like she wanted to cry, but she hadn’t cried since she was a toddler, so she was inclined to blame the urge on the alcohol in her system.

 

She wanted to say something, but she wasn’t sure what there was to say.

 

A few minutes had eked by before Uma spoke again, a soft, blasé, “Hey.”

 

Mal looked over at her. She was slumped in the chair, her head leaning back, eyes closed. “…yeah?” Mal asked.

 

A deep, audible breath. “About that… that monster, or whatever it was. Did it feel odd to you?”

 

Mal’s fingers stilled their drumming, the sudden shift in topic awkward enough that she was fairly certain Uma was trying to backtrack, dispel the tension and return things to how they’d been before. Mal wouldn’t be forgetting their conversation any time soon, but she appreciated the distraction, the option to put it aside for the moment, to save thinking about and dissecting it for later.

 

“What do you mean odd?” Mal asked, her own tone a mirror of Uma’s.

 

“I mean besides the burning.” Her eyes snapped open and she sat up straight, setting her hands in her lap and staring down them, her eyebrows furrowing. “Like, it hurt, but… gods, I swear I could feel something inside of me. Something empowering.”

 

Mal frowned, leaning forward as if a better look at Uma’s hands would make what she’d said make more sense. She couldn’t say she had any idea what Uma was talking about, but she’d admittedly been distracted at the time, those eyes and that pain devouring her mind, so it was possible she’d missed something. “Empowering?”

 

“Yeah, I-I don’t know.” She looked up at Mal. “You didn’t feel it?”

 

Mal shrugged. “Honestly, I was kind of out of it. If you felt something, I believe you, but-”

 

“I can _still_ feel it.” Uma went back to staring at her hands, pressing her lips together. “It’s faint, but it’s there. Like electricity, a kind of tingling in my body, but I can especially feel it in my hands. You really can’t feel anything?”

 

Mal concentrated. It was hard to feel anything past her aches and pains and, now that she was thinking about it, the light fuzziness in her head that must have been from the alcohol. Regardless, she assessed her body, closed her eyes, really searching for the sensation Uma had described and- “Oh. Yeah.” She could feel it in her chest, a misplaced energy, fluttering along with her heartbeat. “What on earth?” she whispered.

 

She was so focused on the sensation that when the door flew open with a loud creak, she practically jumped out of her skin.

 

It was Jay, striding into the room like he was on a mission. He flashed Mal a smile, but the way his eyebrows knitted together as he looked her over made it less convincing. “Mal,” he greeted, her. “You look terrible.”

 

The corners off Mal’s lips tilted up and she gave an amused shake of her head. “Gee, thanks,” she said sarcastically. “And here I was, all worried I didn’t look as bad as I felt.”

 

Jay laughed, stopping at her bedside. “Yeah, well, worry no longer.” He shot a sideways glance at Uma, seeming to hesitate for a moment before shrugging it off. “Uh,” he focused back on Mal, grimacing, “I needed that pouch actually.”

 

Mal’s eyebrows raised, the words, “Is today cursed, or something?” slipping, unbidden, past her lips. The only pouch he could be talking about was the one that held her pads and tampons.

 

Jay snorted, amusement taking the place of his discomfort. “I mean, I’m inclined to say yes,” he replied, his tone light and playful.

 

“No, I’m serious.” Mal glanced around, asking, “Do either of you see my jacket?”

 

Uma leaned over, grabbing it from, Mal assumed, the floor at the end of the bed, and tossed it to her. Mal moved the bucket out of the way and pulled the jacket onto her lap. Bending her arms was still damn near agonizing and her fingers were trembling horribly from it, but it no longer felt impossible, the alcohol clearly having done at least a little bit of something for her pain.

 

“You’re one of the few of us that didn’t get hurt, but now this?” Mal said, continuing her mini-rant as she unfolded the jacket, taking note of a few holes burned into the material. “I swear if I hear that Carlos so much as stubbed his toe, I’m going to lose it.”

 

Jay was laughing again, loud and bright, clearly not understanding just how serious she was, but she decided to ignore him.

 

“Pain meds?” she asked as she started rifling through her pockets.

 

Jay cleared his throat, shoving his hands in his back pockets and shaking his head. “No, I got some from Malva for a headache, so I’m fine.”

 

Mal nodded, accepting his cover story for what it was, and her hand closed around the pouch – a pouch she’d started using for this exact purpose, discrete trade-offs between her and Jay being relatively common since he had a bad habit of forgetting when his period was coming up.

 

Mal was one of the few people who knew he was trans – Evie and Carlos having been told relatively recently when he’d asked if Evie could make him a proper binder and Evie, with all the knowledge of the diverse fashion magazines she managed to squirrel away for herself, had launched into a concerned spiel about improper binding and how a sports bra would be less dangerous with his active lifestyle and that it’d take her some trial and error, but she’d see what she could do about an actual binder if he would please just be more safe with his body. She’d churned out a sports bra for him by the end of the afternoon and was still working out the mechanics of a safe binder. Mal, on the other hand, had been acquainted with Jay since they were toddlers, the two of them living near enough to each other that she’d more or less been there for the screaming fits that accompanied his father slipping up and referring to him with the wrong name, so, unlike most people their age, she knew and had always known.

 

She held the pouch out to Jay and he took it with a grin. “You’re a lifesaver.”

 

Mal shrugged. Looking at Jay smiling at her reminded her of her argument with Uma from earlier. She shifted, uncomfortable, a constricting feeling blocking off her throat. She couldn’t quite bring herself to smile back.

 

“Oh, by the way,” Jay said, glancing from Mal to Uma, “The food Malva was making is done. I don’t think you’re being given a choice about coming down to eat.” To Mal he asked, “Want me to carry you?”

 

A frustrated groan from Uma stole both of their attentions. “I’m supposed to eat with my hands like this?” she asked, lifting said hands for emphasis.

 

“Just get Harry to feed you,” Jay suggested.

 

Uma wrinkled her nose, grumbling, “This is so inconvenient. I wish they were just better already, how long am I-” She cut off with a sharp gasp, her eyes going wide as she curled over, clutching her hands to her stomach.

 

“Uma!?” Mal exclaimed.

 

She exchanged a baffled, frantic look with Jay.

 

Hesitantly, he approached Uma, whispered curses leaving her lips, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

 

“You okay?” Jay asked.

 

Uma shook her head then, a second or two later, nodded.

 

“Is it a yes or a no?” Mal asked.

 

Uma gingerly uncoiled, staring at her hands in affronted bewilderment. “It’s a yes,” she said, slowly, raising her eyes to look at Mal briefly before looking back down at her hands. The tension from whatever pain had assaulted her quickly slipped from her body as she gently flexed her fingers. “What the hell…”

 

“Uma, what happened?” Jay asked, taking his hand from her shoulder now that she apparently seemed to be all right.

 

Uma pressed her lips together, picking at the edge of the gauze on one hand, pulling at it and unraveling all of Malva’s hard work. “I don’t know,” she replied. “There was a burst of pain and now it just doesn’t hurt anymore.” She started unraveling more rapidly.

 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mal said.

 

“Has anything about today made any since?” Uma countered. She must have reached skin then, because she froze momentarily, staring.

 

“What is it?”

 

Uma unraveled more of her hand, all the way down to her wrist.

 

“No way!” Jay gasped, openly gaping.

 

Mal, at this point, was getting impatient. “What _is_ it?”

 

Uma turned her hand to face Mal. Across her palm and fingers, in place of what should have been a fresh injury, was shiny scar tissue.

 

“Apparently, I’m healed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specifics about my ‘Jay is trans’ fic canon:  
> • I chose the scene I did to reveal it to the reader in-story because of the logic that ‘they’re already having a cursed day, why not make it more cursed’ and Mal’s reaction was funny. So it was really just me seeing an opportunity and taking it.  
> • Like you get from Mal, Jay has been out as a boy most of his life so even though the Isle is contained, a lot of people don’t know he’s trans if they didn’t know him around the time he first came out, like how Evie and Carlos didn't.  
> • I’m going with the idea that he doesn’t really care if people know he’s trans because he’s grown up in an environment where it hasn’t really mattered – his dad accepted it because he didn’t care (Jay’s gender has nothing to do with Jafar’s end goals), other adults around him generally didn’t care, and little baby Mal readily accepted it – but it’s also a private, personal detail so if he doesn’t have to mention it to a stranger or someone he’s just not close to he won’t (which is why he went to Mal with his need for a pad instead of asking Malva about it).  
> • He’s dysphoric, but it’s not terrible, again going with the rational that his environment has never made him feel like less of a boy because of his body, but he still has an image in his head of how he’d like to look.  
> • No hormones, but only because the Isle’s resources are literally all cast off stuff from Auradon. He would use them if he could get his hands on them.  
> • If you have any questions or (if you’re a trans man) complaints/suggestions about any of this hmu either in the comments or at lesbianfog.tumblr.com or, if you want, I’d even give you my email so we can have a proper discussion.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: 1. Mal pushes on and otherwise aggravates her wounds as a means of self-harm and there’s a mention of blood being drawn from this at one point; 2. There are implications that scars detract from beauty but this is specifically stated in relation to Evie and is meant to reflect her stringent view of what beauty is and her distorted sense of self-worth regarding it.

It was magic.

 

Obviously, it was magic. It _had_ to be magic.

 

The only question was: how could Uma have suddenly acquired it?

 

They bounced ideas back and forth, each more ludicrous than the last, stopping only for Uma to heal her knee and then, again, for her to try to heal Mal’s… everything. The wound on Uma’s knee, like her hands, once unveiled had been replaced with a shiny, jagged scar. Mal on the other hand, after nearly blacking out from the pain, only had partially healed wounds to show for it.

 

A moment of hesitation, an odd look between Uma and Mal, and Uma had cupped Mal’s face – the only easily accessible bare skin for Uma to touch. With a firm hold on Mal, Uma had closed her eyes in concentration. Her lips had moved silently as she’d wished for Mal’s wounds to heal.

 

Following a harsh burst of pain, Mal, trembling and hazy, realized that Uma was still touching her. Uma’s palms were cool on her skin, thumbs rubbing soothing lines along her cheekbones, a grounding sensation to latch onto as her head resettled and her nausea abated.

 

Mal opened her eyes.

 

The hands fell away, fingertips dragging and making her shiver, and Uma took a step back, out of her space. Jay was beside Uma, watching Mal anxiously, the pouch she’d given him clenched tightly in his fist.

 

Mal wanted to tell him to ease up on his grip, but before she could, he was asking, “Are you okay?” His free hand came up, hovering over Mal, like he wanted to touch but wasn’t sure anywhere was actually safe to do it. “You, like, _convulsed_.”

 

Mal rolled her shoulders, dragged her fingers through her hair, shifted a bit. She was, undeniably, still aching, but bending her arms was actually possible now and each movement didn’t make her feel like pained cries were begging to be torn from her throat. It was a dull, pulsing pain instead, more or less ignorable.

 

She licked her lips.

 

“I don’t think it worked all the way,” she said, gaze flickering from Jay to Uma. “I feel a lot better, but everything still kind of hurts.”

 

Uma’s eyebrows furrowed and she stepped forward. “Let me try again,” she said, reaching out slowly, giving Mal time to back away if she wanted to, and placing her hands back on Mal’s face. That look of concentration returned, but this time when she mouthed her request nothing happened – no flashes of pain and, decidedly, _no_ improvement.

 

When Mal told Uma as much, she pulled away, staring at her hands, puzzled and frustrated.

 

“How much did it heal?” Jay asked. He’d evidently gotten over his initial hesitation because he’d taken up one of Mal’s hands the second Uma moved out of the way, squeezing it gently.

 

Mal shrugged, considering. “I’m functional, I think.”

 

Jay nodded, looking relieved. “Functional is good. Way better than bed-ridden.” He looked and sounded incredible relieved, his shoulders lax and his mouth tilted up in an easy, crooked smile. Obviously, he’d been a lot more concerned about her well-being than he’d initially pretended to be. Another squeeze to her hand, though, and he was letting go. “Okay, well, I’m going to go let everyone else know what happened. Be right back.” He then quickly slipped out of the room.

 

Left alone, Uma started pacing, Mal watching her.

 

The bucket was no longer necessary, Mal having stopped feeling one forceful push from throwing up. She set it down by the side of the bed, grunting softly, her side burning as she bent over. After straightening up and a steadying breath, she threw the covers off of herself and dropped her feet down to the floor beside the bucket.

 

Like she’d expected, her thighs _were_ wrapped, the same as her arms, and a few patches had been placed on her calves, areas she hadn’t even realized were hurt. She eyed them curiously, raising one leg to rest her ankle on her knee and poking one of the patches. It didn’t hurt, beyond perhaps a bit of tenderness, so she carefully pealed the patch back to peer underneath it. The scar she found there was dark, almost red, like something that hadn’t quite healed properly, but it _did_ seem to be healed all the way through. With a short hum Mal sealed the patch back over it, not particularly wanting to deal with the concern the sight of such an aggressive scar would bring.

 

As she finished resealing it, she looked up at Uma. She lowered her foot back to the ground, started bouncing her leg, gnawing on her lower lip, tracing the gauze on her thighs with feather-light fingertips. Each jolt of her leg brought more of the dull pain that had made itself at home in her body. She bit down on her lip harder, bounced her leg faster, shifted her tracing into pressing, the pain growing and growing until finally—

 

“Thanks,” she said, forcing the word from her mouth.

 

It brought Uma up short, her pacing coming to a halt and her head snapping in Mal’s direction.

 

“For trying to heal me,” Mal elaborated. “You didn’t have to.:

 

A moment passed. Uma crossed her arms and cocked her hip. “You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t have to. But I wasn’t just going to leave you incapacitated like that.”

 

In a moment of awkwardness following the admission, Mal had half a mind to jokingly tell her it seemed like she was taking a page from Malva’s book, but decided it was too soon after their fight to bring it up and kept her mouth firmly shut.

 

She pressed into her thigh harder, wondered if maybe Uma was always been like this and it wasn’t just a result of the circumstances. Maybe that was why she’d been defensive of Malva in the first place – the two of them too similar for her not to argue in Malva’s favor. Afterall, Uma couldn’t have an entire crew of loyal followers – a path in and of itself so different from the solitary rule Mal had been trained to pursue – for nothing. Mal had always assumed she’d used fear and intimidation to assert control over them, but now she wasn’t so sure.

 

Her fingers were still digging into her thigh. Digging and digging and digging.

 

It helped with keeping her thoughts to herself.

 

In the wake of Mal’s silence Uma had started up her pacing again, massaging her temples. As she walked, steadily picking up speed, she fervently muttered, “If we just knew how I was accessing the magic we could figure out why it’s not working anymore and what we have to do to get more of it. And that could change _everything_.”

 

Mal hummed. “That revolution you were always talking about?” She lifted her fingers, started at the faint patch of blood that hadn’t been on the gauze before, then went back to pressing, gritting her teeth with it.

 

“Maybe,” Uma replied, her tone distant, thoughts miles away from Mal, probably analyzing the conundrum from every possible angle.

 

Mal, personally, was pretty sure she was still a bit tipsy, the pain having failed to fully sober her up, and was beginning to feel the weight of exhaustion, both physical and mental, bearing down on her on top of it. Brain too sluggish to be of much practical use, she continued to simply watch Uma pace.

 

It was methodic.

 

She could feel herself drifting.

 

When Uma stopped all of a sudden, a startled, “Oh!” slipping past her lips, Mal jolted back to wakefulness. “The monster!” Uma exclaimed, whipping around to face Mal, her expression slack with surprise. “I can’t believe we didn’t realize it sooner, it _has_ to be because of the monster!”

 

The monster? Mal’s eyebrows furrowed. Why would it be…

 

“That energy,” Mal realized, her eyes widening, a hand flying to her chest. It was still there, still pulsing in time to her heartbeat. “Can you still feel it?” she asked, urgently.

 

Uma clenched and unclenched her hands a few times, then shook her head. “No. I must have used it all up. No wonder I couldn’t heal you completely.” She walked over to Mal. “You should see if you can finish the job.”

 

Mal nodded, about to do just that, when she remembered. “Evie.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“I should take care of Evie first.” She dropped her hands to the bed, pushing herself up to her feet. She was a little dizzy, her body not entirely happy with her decision, but it wasn’t terrible. She could definitely make her way to Evie like this.

 

She couldn’t believe it’d taken her so long to think of her. Even if Evie supposedly wasn’t _badly_ hurt, she was still hurt. Mal should have had Uma heal _her_ in the first place.

 

She then thought of the scars on Uma’s body and the one she’d seen on her own body and clenched her hands.

 

Evie would hate it if she came out of this scarred. She’d _hate_ it. She was so dedicated to her appearance, to beauty – to _perfection_ , specifically.

 

Mal wondered, a bit desperately, if she could heal her scar-free if she tried hard enough.

 

She only got a few steps across the room before Uma was stopping her to offer her an arm for support. Mal was moving to take it, the path of least resistance seeming like the best way to get going again, when the door burst open.

 

It was Evie. The rest of their group and Malva were behind her, but all that mattered at that moment was Evie.

 

She zeroed in on Mal and rushed into the room, crying out, “M!”

 

Her hair was mussed from sleep, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, and her clothes had been replaced with a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, both not quite big enough for her and worn with age, but probably incredibly soft to the touch. In a matter of moments, Mal was swept up in her arms, Evie’s arms squeezing around her tightly – too tightly, honestly, but Mal couldn’t bring herself to care about the discomfort. Looking at them now, it was hard to imagine that just a few months ago Mal would have happily seen Evie maimed.

 

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Evie said, nuzzling her nose into Mal’s hair. Her arms, somehow, seemed to tighten further before relaxing. One hand fell to the small of Mal’s back, the other rested between her shoulder blades.

 

“Yeah,” Mal replied. “I’m, um, I’m okay.” Freedom of movement, so long as that movement did not involve detaching herself from Evie, returned to her, Mal wrapped an arm around Evie’s back and stated rubbing slow circles into her skin. Evie melted into her more, their bodies pressing tightly together, and took a deep breath, the exhale caressing Mal’s ear and down the side of her neck.

 

Mal shivered, her breath hitching.

 

She then became aware of the rest of the room – Carlos hovering nearby, practically vibrating with what Mal figured had to be an all-consuming desire to ask questions; Jay hanging back, unfazed both by Mal’s recovery, because he’d been there for it, and the display of affection; and Uma, Harry, and Malva, staring on with a varying array of curiosity. It was the last three that brought a flush crawling up Mal’s face, burning brightly in her ears.

 

She cleared her throat, tugging back from Evie slightly. Evie got the message, letting her out of the hug, though she caught Mal’s hands as she took a couple steps back.

 

“I was so worried about you,” Evie said, her thumbs caressing Mal’s knuckles. There was a slight tremble to her voice, then she was biting her lip and looking away.

 

Mal wished they were alone, or at least only in the company of Jay and Carlos, wanted the comfort that privacy would afford her to talk to Evie. Instead, she forced herself to make-do with an audience. It helped that, the height of the spectacle over with, Malva and Harry had gravitated to Uma, talking with her about what had happened.

 

“Are you doing okay?” Mal asked, squeezing Evie’s hands. Aside from the obvious stress of the evening and her injuries, there was no way Evie wasn’t feeling horribly off-kilter with how off-course their plans for the day had gone. They should have been home by now and she should have been well into her nightly routine, a routine she was probably going to have to skip entirely if they really did end up staying with Malva for the night.

 

Evie shrugged, but as the euphoria of seeing Mal conscious and standing faded, she began looking more and more tense. “It’s not great, but I’m managing. Can’t go on an adventure without anticipating some setbacks.” She smiled, but it wasn’t anywhere near as dazzling and bright as her smiles typically were.

 

“So, what happened?” Carlos suddenly asked, the question bursting from his mouth as if he simply couldn’t stand the wait anymore. “Uma has magic? Like, _real_ magic?”

 

“She _had_ real magic,” Mal replied, turning towards him, her hands still caught up in Evie’s. “We think it came from the monster.”

 

“The monster!?” Carlos and Evie asked simultaneously. Meanwhile, Jay’s relative inattention had been traded out for startled interest and he came closer, hovering behind Carlos.

 

Mal nodded. “And we’re pretty sure I got some of its magic too.”

 

A hand was pressed to Carlos’s mouth, his eyebrows knitting together in thought. “How much magic must it have for it to be leaking it like that?” he asked, though Mal doubted he actually expected an answer.

 

“Do you think I have some of it too?” Evie asked.

 

Mal blinked. She hadn’t even thought of that. “Maybe?” she replied, uncertain. “You weren’t in contact with it for very long, but… do you feel anything? Some kind of energy?”

 

Evie thought about it for a few moments, her nose scrunching up as she concentrated, but ultimately she shook her head. “No, no I don’t think so.”

 

Mal nodded, then licked her lips. Now came the hard part. “I wanted to try healing your injuries.” Evie smiled, some sort of ‘thank you’ clearly on the tip of her tongue, but before she could get it out, Mal pushed on. “There’s a problem though.”

 

As soon as the smile had come, it was gone, replaced by a confused frown. “Problem?” Evie asked.

 

Mal stared down at their joined hands. “I don’t know if I can heal you without leaving behind scarring.” A beat of silence passes and, feeling fidgety, she elaborated, “All of Uma’s injuries left scars behind.”

 

The silence continued to stretch between them, not even Carlos or Jay daring to speak – they all knew how big of a deal this had to be for Evie. Mal risked a quick glance up and felt queasy. Evie looked devastated; her eyes shiny with tears she must have been fighting back and her bottom lip puled between her teeth.

 

“I… I mean,” Evie finally said, her voice small, “if this leaves behind scars there’s probably nothing I could do to prevent them.” She took a shuddering breath. “It’s the best option; no having to take care of the wounds or risk of infection.” It sounded very much like she was trying to convince herself of this fact. “I want you to do it. Please.”

 

“Okay,” Mal said, gently. “This is going to hurt, so you should sit down.”

 

Evie looked a bit nervous at that, but allowed herself to be led to the bed and took a seat. Malva and Harry were back to watching, curiously.

 

Mal closed her eyes. She’d never used magic before, but it couldn’t be that hard. It’d probably come to her instinctively, like it had for Uma.

 

She thought about what she wanted – Evie all healed and better, her skin smooth and glowing and scar-free – and concentrated on it, really pushed meaning into it. In response, the magic in her chest swelled, swelled to the point she was afraid she was going to pop, and began flowing through her arms – she could feel it in her veins, not entirely pleasant, but not exactly unpleasant either – and from her palms and fingertips she could feel it exit, entering Evie.

 

Evie gasped, a harsh, pained sound, and Mal had to fight back the automatic instinct to let go. Then, Evie was gripping her hands with a bruising force and she couldn’t have let go if she tried.

 

It was over in a matter of moments, the flow of the magic coming to a stop, the swell in her chest of the magic still left within her settling back down to a faint pulsing.

 

Mal opened her eyes.

 

Evie was staring down at her body, a tenseness that Mal hadn’t realized was present now gone from her face – along with, Mal assumed, any pain she’d been suffering through.

 

“You feel better?” Mal asked.

 

Evie, looked up, her eyes glittering. “So much better. This is amazing!” She tugged Mal in further, as if she couldn’t help herself, needed her closer in her happiness. Mal slotted in between her legs and Evie slid her hands up Mal’s forearms to wrap loosely around her biceps. Mal stared down at Evie’s dazzling smile, could feel Evie’s body heat, from where her hands and thighs where touching Mal, like a furnace. Her heart fluttered.

 

“Do you want to check them?” Even as Mal spoke, she knew asking was a mistake. She wanted to slam her head into the wall with the stupidity of it. Did Evie want to check, to see if she was scarred forever, to see if Mal had failed, to see if the remnants of today’s disaster would stay with her forever? Of _course_ she wouldn’t want to check.

 

“Oh!” Evie exclaimed, her hold on Mal loosening, her face noticeably blanching. “Oh, no. No, I don’t want to check. I don’t want to check.” She repeated it a few more times, the repetitions only coming to a stop once she pressed a hand to her mouth, physically bringing them to an end.

 

Mal stepped back, out of Evie’s space, crossing her arms over her chest. They burned a bit, so she squeezed them tighter. “Okay, that’s totally okay. We don’t have to check right now. Later?”

 

Evie’s hand slipped away from her mouth, a faint, strained smile on her lips. “Later,” she agreed.

 

Mal nodded, her own lips pressing together into a thin line.

 

“Well,” Malva drawled, her voice interrupting the moment like a crack of violent thunder, “this has certainly been fascinating.” She was leaning back against her dresser, ankles crossed, head tilted to the side, curls cascading around her shoulders, bare from the tank top she was wearing that was tucked into the elastic waistband of her skirt that hung down to her mid-calves. Tattoos crawled up her ankles and curled around her collarbones. “But do you suppose we could move this to the dining room and you all could continue your discussion over the late dinner I did not _have_ to make?” The way she said it, it was very clearly not a suggestion.

 

Uma and Harry filed out without a fuss, Uma muttering that she was starving, actually. Malva shoved off of the dresser approaching Mal and her group.

 

“We’ll be there in a second,” Jay said, waving her off.

 

She raised an eyebrow, glancing them over. “Ten minutes,” she said, “then I’m coming back up to drag you down if I have to.” Directing a particularly intense stare at Carlos, she added, “Starting with you. You’re so thin, the wind could blow you over if it tried hard enough.”

 

Carlos, looking utterly flabbergasted, could only watch as she sauntered out of the room, Jay snickering beside him.

 

“She’s right, you know,” Jay said. “You need to be fattened up.” He lightly pinched Carlos’s side, drawing a soft yelp and getting his hand smacked away.

 

Carlos rubbed at the spot, glaring at Jay. “Yeah, well… who asked you guys,” he grumbled.

 

Jay rolled his eyes. “Don’t have to ask, C. Worry is worry and _you_ elicit a lot of it. Apparently even from strange women living on the edge of the Isle.”

 

Carlos’s mouth twisted up, an embarrassed, secretly pleased flush spreading across his face.

 

They had all noticed by now that Carlos enjoyed being cared for, though he never quite understood it when it happened, either confused or suspicious or both. Evie had basically made it her mission to change that. At least with _her_ , with them. It was, decidedly, a very slow-going project.

 

“Anyway,” Jay dug into his pocket, pulling Mal’s pouch out of it and holding it out to her, “just wanted to get this back to you.”

 

Mal took it and Evie passed Mal her jacket from where it lay discarded beside her. The pouch returned to where it belonged, Mal realized, holding her jacket, that she was painfully underdressed. Malva must have traded her pants out for a pair of cotton short-shorts, but she was topless, the only thing keeping her decent being the gauze wrapped loosely, but securely, around her torso. After a moment of indecision, she pulled the jacket on and zipped it up. Gauze was visible through a couple roughly hand-sized holes, but it would do.

 

“You think Malva would give me a shirt, now that I can lift my arms without blacking out?” Mal asked, fingering one of the holes.

 

“Probably,” Jay replied, shrugging.

 

Evie stood, gesturing towards the door. “Should we head down, then?”

 

Mal stared at Evie, that sick feeling she kept feeling about Uma rising back up again. Evie looked fine; the color had returned to her face and though tiredness was dragging at her edges, that was no different than any of the rest of them. That didn’t, however, erase Mal’s memory of her devastation and horror. Looking at her now, Mal couldn’t help but think that if it weren’t for her idea, Evie wouldn’t have been in the woods and gotten injured in the first place.

 

She squeezed her crossed arms to her chest even tighter than she’d held them earlier, tight enough to ache even if she weren’t covered in partially healed burns.

 

“Yeah,” she said, softly. “Let’s head down.”

 

The closer they got to the dining room, the stronger the scent of whatever Malva had made grew. It smelled surprisingly delicious, made Mal’s mouth water – a sensation she didn’t think she’d ever had reason to experience. Uma, Harry, and Malva were already eating, bowls of soup, it looked like. A pot was set in the center of rather long table, an assortment of random chairs pulled up to it and extra bowls and spoons already placed out for Mal and the rest.

 

The scene reminded Mal, uncomfortably, of the stupid Auradonian sitcoms that would come on, on one of the very few channels they got on the Isle. It was downright… _domestic_. It made her skin crawl. Regardless, she sat down, served herself, and forced herself to eat despite the sick, sick, sick feeling that had settled so heavily in her stomach.

 

More chatter bounced back and forth amongst them about the creature and the magic and what they could do about it all.

 

It was Carlos, half-distracted after their dishes had all been swept up by Malva and taken to the kitchen, who finally said, “Uh, I, uh, I think we need to go to the, um, the forbidden library if we want a chance at figuring out anything concrete.” He was staring after Malva, fiddling with his fingers, as if expecting that at any second she’d demand he take over cleaning up.

 

“Tomorrow morning?” Uma suggested, to which there was a general consensus.

 

After that, it wasn’t long before they were all settling in to sleep, the hour already pushing into the early morning and exhaustion hanging heavy in the air. Malva had gotten Mal a shirt and a pair of longer pants at her request. There weren’t guest rooms, but Malva had a couch and a few cots.

 

Mal and Evie were sharing one of the cots, shoved into a far corner of the living room.

 

The lights had mostly been turned out, only a single lamp left on, its faint glow not providing much more than the outline of the meager furniture in the room. There was the shuffling of footsteps elsewhere in the house and the subtle creaking of the building settling. For the moment Mal was alone, Evie off taking care of what she needed to before going to sleep.

 

Sitting on the cot, Mal closed her eyes. What with all the fuss, she hadn’t gotten the chance to deal with her own injuries. She thought about healing them, conjured it up, concentrated on it, willed it into existence, braced herself for an influx of pain.

 

She waited for the swelling of the magic, for the pain, for the tingling in her veins.

 

She waited.

 

And waited.

 

And waited.

 

And as she waited, the sick, sick, sick feeling in her stomach grew.

 

A whole minute passed and nothing magical happened. Dumbfounded, Mal opened her eyes, pressed a hand to her chest. The magic was there, there was no question about that.

 

So why could she no longer access it?

 

Frustrated, she was about to try again, when a soft pattering of footsteps alerted her to Evie entering the room. Her hair was tied into a braid and even in the dim lighting she looked lovely. Mal sighed, pushing her injuries aside for the moment as nonessential and the issue with the magic as something that was better thought about after rest, and scooted back on the cot, laying down while leaving enough room for Evie to get situated.

 

Evie laid down facing her, their bodies, already very close together because of the limited space, sliding even closer as the cot dipped under their weight.

 

Evie giggled softly, reaching out to clasp one of Mal’s hands in hers, their fingers threading together, and a small smile tugged at Mal’s lips.

 

Mal’s body throbbed and that sick feeling was still skulking in her stomach and her chest and even her bones, but as Evie whispered, “Night, M,” she closed her eyes, mumbled “Good night” back, and didn’t think about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up at lesbianfog.tumblr.com


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright. So. Listen. First of all, I… I completely and utterly lost control of the length of this chapter and, believe it or not, I had to cut 3 other scenes that I was planning to include. Those will be in the next chapter, which should be the last. Unless, god forbid, it tries to be even longer than this chapter ended up getting. Second, I edited this chapter on 2-ish hours of sleep and I hope that isn’t reflected in the quality but. I make no promises on that matter.
> 
> Okay, now that that’s out of the way: Me????? Projecting my own concern and love for Carlos onto my OC, Malva????? Why yes. I am. That being said, she does hold a sort of important place in the story, but I don’t want her to overshadow the actual ‘Descendants’ characters so I hope it doesn’t feel like she is.
> 
> And about my use of magic in this fic: honestly, I am both not creative enough for silly rhymes and not a fan of silly rhymes, that’s why my take on it is a simpler ‘manifesting your wants through force of will’ kind of thing and I also view magic as a sort of living energy, not exactly with the sentience of humans and animals, but enough so that it can affect others and be effected by others if that makes sense.
> 
> Finally, warnings: 1. More of the same self-harm Mal has been engaging in but described more vaguely than it's been previously; 2. Mal has a bit of a internal meltdown; 3. There’s a depiction of physical and emotional abuse of Mal as a child.

The morning was chaotic, to say the least. Seven people in an average-sized house with one bathroom; a large pile of clothes dropped down in the living room for Mal, Uma, and Evie, at least, to sort through since the clothes they came in had been ruined; and frequent traffic going into and out of the kitchen.

 

The clothes Mal got her hands on were a bit too large on her, but it was nothing tucking in the long-sleeved shirt, putting on a belt, and cuffing her pants couldn’t fix. Uma was in the same sort of predicament, though she didn’t have to take hiding gauze into consideration with her choices. Evie, meanwhile, had happily accepted the fact that on her, Malva’s clothes would be crop-tops and capris. Carlos and Jay had opted out of getting fresh clothes, but Harry had had Uma pick something out for him, thanking her with a kiss on the cheek that Mal and Evie had dutifully pretended they hadn’t seen Uma contentedly accepting.

 

Once Carlos was ready, he ended up taking up a post in the kitchen, putting on a spare apron and helping Malva with the cooking while unsuccessfully fending off the food she kept pushing at him to eat. Mal had followed after him when she’d heard his intention to help, still hopping into her pants, and was standing watch, leaning back on the counter, as out of the way as she could be in the cramped space.

 

She had no intention of offering her assistance and neither Carlos nor Malva asked her too, not that she thought there was much room for her among the flurry of their bodies.

 

Malva was a downright disaster in the kitchen with everything scattered all about. As Mal watched, she thought it must have been a miracle that the dinner she’d made the night before turned out okay, unless one of the others had been in the kitchen assisting her. Pancakes were repeatedly nearly left to burn, were it not for Carlos, as she’d run off to deal with toast popping out of the toaster; jars of jam that were overturned in her haste would be righted by Carlos, their spillage wiped up by him; and the batter and flour that was already covering the counter space when Carlos and Mal had come into the room were slowly being cleaned up when Carlos wasn’t dashing over to save the pancakes or jam.

 

All-in-all, Mal was much happier not throwing herself into the chaos. Her only purpose in the kitchen was to make sure Malva didn’t take advantage of Carlos while he was actually willingly offering his help. Mal might not be able to do anything about Cruella, but she was confidant she could put a stop to Malva if she started pushing boundaries and bossing Carlos around.

 

As it was, Mal was relieved to see Carlos almost at ease working with and cleaning up after Malva. Mal figured it was both the fact that helping out satisfied his anxiety—taking action rather than sitting around, twitchy, as he waited for harshly barked orders that just weren’t coming – and that the atmosphere in the kitchen was so different than it was at Hell Hall.

 

With Malva, the work Carlos was doing hardly seemed like a chore, the two of them dancing around each other, flying from place to place, meeting up when Malva pull him to a stop, shoving a forkful of pancake in his face, the same sort of abrasive care Mal had been subjected too, but a bit gentler.

 

At one point Malva even prodded him in the stomach as he chewed, clucking her tongue and complaining again about how underweight he was, how she could practically see his ribs, and when that touch to his stomach had forcibly dragged out a giggle, Malva had raised an eyebrow with a sly, “Oh?” and had launched a mini tickle attack, Carlos begging her to stop, but doing nothing to actually make her until he noticed a pancake burning and she’d easily let him wiggle out of her grasp, never having really trapped him in the first place.

 

It was weird to watch.

 

Kind of made Mal’s skin crawl.

 

Kind of made her eyes burn.

 

Kind of made her want to kick a wall, scream, toss the plates and cups and toast all over the room, stomp until she broke a floorboard, curl up in a ball, scratch at her arms, tear at her hair, or maybe Malva’s hair, or maybe rip her m-

 

Or maybe-

 

Or maybe…

 

Instead, Mal took a few deep, steadying breaths and watched the two of them with all the blank, numbness she could muster, smothering her thoughts.

 

Her hands clenched at her sides and it suddenly reminded her of Uma asking, _“Why so angry all the time Mal?”_ Just to be contrary, she forced herself to unclench them and then her jaw and then the tension that had built up in her shoulders. She didn’t feel any better and the sounds and smells of the kitchen were starting to drive her up a wall on top of whatever else was suddenly so very wrong with her, but she just covered her nose and closed her eyes and hoped the chaos would calm soon.

 

It was a few gratingly slow minutes later when Malva said, “I think that’s about all we should need to make. Will you go tell your friends they can officially eat instead of just stealing illicit snacks?” Her tone was teasing and Mal was pretty sure she was talking to Carlos. He seemed like the only person in their group capable of eliciting actual emotion out of her.

 

Mal took Carlos’s, “Yeah, sure,” as conformation and stayed put, waiting a beat or two after he had left the room to open her eyes.

 

The kitchen was still an eyesore, but without all of the motion and the… the _scene_ Carlos and Malva had been putting on, it was easier to look at. She left a hand over her nose.

 

Malva had pulled herself up onto a clear space on the counter, her feet hanging above the ground, and was wiping her hands on a dish towel, watching Mal.

 

“You feeling okay?” Malva asked. And the way she interacted with Mal, the way she held herself and spoke, it wasn’t like how she’d interacted with Carlos. It wasn’t as kind and soft; it was more hesitant and analytical, like the second Carlos had left the room the warmth had been sucked right out of her along with him.

 

“Why are you treating him like that?” The question, bursting at the seams with suspicion, and jealousy that Mal would never admit to herself existed, spilled from Mal’s mouth before she could think it through. “I don’t see you treating any of the rest of us like that.” And as soon as the words were out of her mouth, they felt too telling, too incriminating, too much of that forbidden jealousy lancing through them. It made her want to cross her arms, defensive, protective, but she didn’t want to remove her hand from her nose, was afraid doing so would make her gag when the scents surrounding her were let back in. She settled, instead, for clutching her free arm tightly around her waist.

 

Malva’s eyes flickered over to the doorway Carlos had left out of. She hummed softly, then said, “He needs it. It’s pretty obvious that he needs it. And I don’t mind giving it, you know? He’s a good kid.” She looked back over at Mal, eyeing her curiously. “Why? Do you need it, too?.

 

The question made Mal’s heart stammer. She wanted to say ‘no,’ but she also badly wanted to say ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ or, most disturbingly, ‘ _please_.’ Instead, Mal gave a short, unamused laugh and, refusing to look at Malva, said, “All I need is to kill that monster in the forest.”

 

Malva hummed, a non-committal sound. “I still don’t like that you all are doing that, especially after what happened just last night. It’s reckless, you’re just putting yourself and your friends at risk.”

 

“Why should I care what you think?” Mal snapped, her anger rising back up, one of her feet actually stomping with it this time. “I’m trying to do something that matters.”

 

“But why does it _have_ to be _you_?”

 

Mal was briefly pulled up short by the question. Not only was the confession that Mal needed to do this to prove to her mother that she wasn’t useless none of Malva’s business, Mal also had a feeling it wasn’t a reason Malva would accept in the first place. After a moment of hesitation, she spat out the first reasonable response she could think of, saying, “Why shouldn’t it be us? Somebody has to do something about it.”

 

“And what?” Malva raised an eyebrow. “You want the prestige that’ll come with it?”

 

Mal grimaced, Malva’s guess a bit too close to the truth for her liking.

 

“Listen,” Malva said, “it’s not worth it. Someone else will take care of it, eventually. An adult, probably, whenever the situation really starts bothering them. _Especially_ if news about touching the creature causing people to gain magic gets out.” She clenched her hands in her lap, so tightly Mal could see her knuckles going white. “What do you need to drop this suicide mission of yours and just _stay safe_? Permission? Because I’ll _give_ you permission. It’s okay to leave this up to someone else. You’re allowed to do that.” The more Malva spoke, the more her cool demeanor seemed to break down, replaced with a worry that was teetering on the edge of desperation.

 

And as the words tumbled from Malva’s lips, Mal stared at her in increasing bafflement and agitation, honestly starting to get a little freaked out.

 

“What is _with_ you?” Mal asked, unable to hold the question back any longer. “First you seem like you couldn’t care less what happens to us, then suddenly you’re taking care of our injuries and acting like _that_ with Carlos and talking like what happens to us matters to you. So, what is your deal? Because everyone else seems to have just accepted it like what you’re doing is normal, but I’m lost.”

 

Malva’s mouth pressed together in a thin line and then her shoulders were slumping and she was dragging a hand through her hair. “If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have told you to stay out of the forest in the first place.”

 

She shook her head, patting at her pockets and pulling out a pack of cigarettes. As she grabbed one and fished around for her lighter, she continued, saying, “Look, I’m not perfect. When we first talked I was frustrated because since that first person died there’s been more and more groups of kids coming around to check it out and none of them listen to me when I tell them it’s too dangerous and that they shouldn’t go looking for something deadly.”

 

Lighter retrieved, Malva put the cigarette between her lips and flicked it on, bringing the flame to the cigarette’s tip and inhaling. After it caught, the lighter was set down on the counter beside her. She took the cigarette from her mouth, smoke falling from her lips in a stream. “I’ll admit, I was ruder to you than I should have been. But there you were looking just as stubborn and bull-headed as the rest of them had and with three other kids coming along with you for the ride. I was mad.” She took another drag of the cigarette.

 

Mal wasn’t sure she was finished speaking, but she took advantage of pause to cut in, snapping, “Evie, Jay, and Carlos are here because they wanted to be. I didn’t drag them into anything.”

 

Malva’s eyebrows raised, the cigarette once again lowered from her mouth. “I didn’t say you _dragged_ them into it. I said they _came_ with you.” She reached over, tapping some ash onto an empty plate. “Do you feel like you forced them?”

 

“What?” Mal asked startled. She tensed, going ridged, the sick feeling she’d felt looking at Evie the night before rioting in her body, and her arm clenching more tightly around her middle. “I just said that I didn’t. Why would I think that I did?”

 

Malva was staring at Mal, at the arm around her waist. “You asked me why I was treating Carlos the way I was and I told you it was because I could tell that he needed it. Carlos isn’t the first kid whose needs I’ve tried to take care of. Lots of kids come around here, they just always have. Something about being at the edge of town draws them in. If I had to guess I’d say it’s because they’re as far away from their parents as they can get.”

 

Another drag on her cigarette and an agitated twitch of her eyebrow. “I’m not the nicest person I’ve ever met. The nicest people don’t…” she trailed off, dragged her tongue along her teeth, considering. “Well, let’s just say they wouldn’t do some of the things I’ve done. They don’t have the stomach for it and that’s fine. And while I’m not the nicest and definitely not the most maternal, I’m still a hell of a lot better than most of the parents on the Isle. I give the kids a place to stay if they want it; tough love, tenderness, a shoulder to cry on if they need it.”

 

Another drag, more ash deposited on the plate. “I can tell what Carlos needs, the kid’s practically telegraphing it to the stars. And you… I didn’t think you needed anything at first, but the longer I’m around you the more I’m positive that you _do_. You need something _badly_. I just don’t know what exactly it is and I can’t give it to you if you don’t help me out a little bit because I can tell if I approach this the wrong way you’re going to running for the hills and never look back.” She stubbed the cigarette out on the plate even though it hadn’t burned all the way down to the filter and pushed herself off of the counter, walking over to the sink, further down from Mal, and prying open the window behind it.

 

“Think about what you need – for me, or for yourself, okay? Oh, and,” she turned back to Mal, “about killing the monster. If you really decide you have to go through with it and any of you get hurt again, don’t hesitate to bust down my door.”

 

“Okay,” Mal replied, the word coming out uncertainly. She wasn’t sure if she was responding to Malva’s request to think about what she needed or her assurance that she’d help them out again.

 

Either way, Malva seemed satisfied with her answer.

 

Mal, meanwhile, had no idea what to think about everything Malva had told her and she definitely didn’t know what to feel about it. Malva’s whole existence seemed to just get more and more surreal.

 

With a shake of her head, Mal left the kitchen, quickly, not wanting to get dragged into another conversation with Malva if she could help it.

 

In the dining room, everyone else had already gravitated to the table.

 

Mal paused, then walked over and took the seat beside Evie. Free from the kitchen, she tentatively lowered her hand from her nose. The air still smelled sweet, but it was nowhere near as thick and heavy as it had been in the kitchen; she could stand it. The same, unfortunately, couldn’t be said for the noise grating on her frayed nerves – Jay alternating between talking with Carlos and arguing with Harry, the clatter of the silverware and dishes as the table was jostled, chairs scratching on the wooden floor, Uma drumming her nails.

 

Mal tugged at her earlobe, gritting her teeth.

 

She was about to snap at everyone to just shut up for _five seconds_ , when Evie said her name, holding out a pair of earplugs as she asked, “Do you want these?”

 

“Thank you,” Mal said, grabbing the earplugs and squeezing Evie’s hand in appreciation. The earplugs didn’t eliminate the noise entirely, but they dulled it, softening the edges, helping her to breathe.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Creeping into Dragon Hall on a Sunday wasn’t hard. Neither teachers nor students ever stuck around for long when classes let out and only Dr. Facilier would ever be caught dead in the school over the weekend. The most difficult part of that whole portion of the endeavor was the walk from Malva’s house and most of the reason it counted as ‘difficult’ was because of the time it took and all the weird looks their group got from people because Mal and Uma were within ten feet of each other and _weren’t_ fighting.

 

When they’d left, Malva had seen them out, telling them they were welcome to come back anytime, then leaning on her doorframe to watch them leave. Feeling Malva’s eyes on her had unnerved Mal a little, her head still rattling around with Malva’s request and that question – _Do you feel like you forced them?_ – so she was glad when she glanced back and saw that a young child had run up to Malva and was pulling at her sleeve, demanding her attention.

 

Unfortunately, it hadn’t stopped that question from echoing in her head and something about how Malva gently brushed her fingers through the kid’s hair had just made it louder, more insistent. Mal had crossed her arms tightly, her eyes unwillingly drawn to Evie, and the question had stuck with her the whole way to Dragon Hall, coiling around her lungs and squeezing tight.

 

After breaking into the school, the six of them made their way swiftly through the halls, stopping outside Dr. Facilier’s office.

 

Mal peered through the window, Uma sidling up next to her, pushing her aside a bit so she could look inside, too. Mal pushed her back only to get shoved, again, harder this time, barely holding in a gasp of pain as her injuries were jostled. Whipping a glare in Uma’s direction, Uma glaring right back, Mal smacked her arm and the two of them devolved into a small slap fight until Jay shoved both of them out of the way and looked through the window himself.

 

“It’s empty,” Jay said. To Mal and Uma, now standing a healthy distance apart, he added, “If you two, you know, actually want to go in anytime soon.”

 

Mal sighed, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. “Just open the door, Jay,” she replied.

 

“I mean, that’s what I’ve been wanting _you two_ to get on with, but, yeah, sure, let’s get annoyed with Jay,” he grumbled, pulling the door open.

 

Uma slipped through, a sound of disgust coming from her almost immediately. “What is _that_?” she demanded.

 

Mal followed after her— and groaned. “The spider,” she hissed, her intentions for a stealthy in and out mission rapidly going up in flames and taking the whole plan of using the library with it as she realized that even if they waited for Facilier so he could call off his pet, she didn’t have anything on hand that he might be interested in as a bribe this time around. “I totally forgot about the stupid spider.”

 

It was standing guard in front of the door to the forbidden library, just like it’d been the last time they’d come here – still disturbingly large, ugly, and probably more than happy to take any excuse to eat them.

 

Evie pressed up against Mal’s side, leaning an arm on Mal’s shoulder. “Do you think you can… do anything about it? With your magic?”

 

Mal groaned again, louder and longer this time. “What if it tries to eat my hand?”

 

Harry snorted, barely managing to get out, “Don’t worry, love, I’ll get you a hook if that happens,” before he dissolved into laughter.

 

“You just have to be fast, M,” Jay said, equally as unhelpful as far as Mal was concerned.

 

Mal pouted, staring at what she could see of the spider past Facilier’s desk, then huffed out a sigh and stepped out of Evie’s grasp.

 

“Be careful,” Evie called after her.

 

Mal waved her concern away, slowly approaching the spider. Its eyes zeroed in on her and, to Mal’s displeasure, it shifted into a defensive stance. “Great,” she muttered. “Okay, um…” There had to be a way to use her magic without touching what she wanted to affect. She knew enough about magic to know that long-distance spells were a thing – and a really common thing at that. It should be simple.

 

Probably.

 

Hopefully.

 

Gods, Mal really didn’t want to have to risk touching the spider. Especially since her magic use seemed spotty at best with how it hadn’t been working last night.

 

Trying not to think about the potential for failure, Mal pressed her lips together and concentrated on putting the spider to sleep. She left her eyes open this time, needing to see it and, as the magic surged inside of her, she gave a slightly self-conscious flick of her wrist, pointing at the spider. To her surprise, a streak of writhing black light left her finger, hitting it. Mal stared down at her hand, wide-eyed, her mouth gaping, as the spider gave an angry screech which swiftly petered out into a growl and then nothing at all as it listed sideways and went still – presumably asleep unless Mal had messed up somehow and killed it, a mistake she wouldn’t mind much, honestly.

 

She flexed her hand and her mouth shifted into a grin. Okay, so the magic was working again. _And_ it looked pretty badass. _And_ Mal was totally killing it!

 

“Nice!” Jay cheered, coming up and giving her a high-five.

 

“So, you can move it and get the door open, right?” Mal raised an eyebrow, perhaps a bit too satisfied with the fact that while she’d gotten away with not having to touch the spider, Jay wouldn’t be so lucky.

 

Jay made a face, but he did move it, sort of half-pushing, half-kicking it aside with his foot, then got to work on the door’s lock. Carlos and Harry were hanging back, keeping watch at the front door. Uma was perusing Facilier’s desk, poking at some things, picking up and examining others while Evie was doing much the same to containers and vials on the room’s shelves, except she was actually pocketing some of what caught her eye. Mal stuck by Jay, watching the spider for any sign of it waking up.

 

Within a minute or two, Jay was once again opening a door for everyone else, this time with a flourish, a wink, and a, “Violà!”

 

Evie tucked one last vial into her pocket and ran over, placing her hand into Jay’s outstretched one and saying a playful, “Why thank you,” as he pretended to help her into the room like she was some Auradonian princess being helped into a carriage.

 

Mal didn’t play along with their theatrics, but she did give Jay a squeeze on his shoulder as she walked past.

 

The library wasn’t large, but with how many books were stuffed inside of it – towering on small tables and overflowing from shelves and building up in piles on the ground – that didn’t seem to matter. Mal took one glance around and wanted to beat Facilier over the head for incompetence.

 

“How are we supposed to find _anything_ in this?” she asked, exasperated.

 

“Everyone pick an area and just start skimming?” Evie suggested, slowly weaving her way to the far wall, carefully stepping over the books left in her path, her eyes floating about the room as she took it all in.

 

“Geeze,” Jay said, walking up behind Mal. Like Evie, his eyes seemed untethered, though his were bouncing from place to place much more rapidly than hers had been, and the fingers of one of his hands were tapping a haphazard rhythm on his thigh. “There’s so much going on here I don’t even know where to start.”

 

Mal surveyed the room for a second time, considering. Uma and Carlos had come in and were situating themselves among the chaos that was the center of the room – Harry still in the office, continuing to keep watch – and Evie was at the back wall. “You can start with the first shelf to the right of the door,” Mal decided. “Skim it top to bottom and work your way over to where Evie’s at now.”

 

She glanced over at Jay for conformation that the plan worked for him and saw that he’d turned around and surveying the shelf she’d suggested he start with.

 

He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, that works.” He flashed her a smile. “Thanks, M.”

 

“No problem.” She went over to the shelf on the left side of the door, planning on doing the same thing she suggested to Jay, and, with a soft sigh, got started.

 

It wasn’t even ten minutes later that Mal became certain that their progress was officially going way too slowly.

 

Jay was calling out each particularly absurd title he came across and the flipping through them before putting them back and returning to the task at hand. Evie must have run across a section on potions or something potion-adjacent because she was building up quite the stack of books to take away with her. And Carlos seemed to be studying each book a little too closely for relevant information. Only Mal and Uma seemed to be making decent progress and they’d still barely made a dent in their chosen sections.

 

Mal placed her hands on her hips, staring at the shelf in front of her, tapping her foot impatiently. “Where the _hell_ are the books on magic, killer mist-monsters?” she muttered to herself.

 

As if in answer to her question, the magic inside of her pulsed violently.

 

Mal winced, pressing a hand to her chest. “ _What_?” she growled quietly, not wanting the others to hear her talking to herself. There was, obviously, no reply and Mal rolled her eyes, going back to her search. A couple minutes later Mal moved on to the next shelf and another pulse, even more aggressive hit her, actually making her gasp with how much it hurt this time.

 

“You okay, Mal?” Carlos called, peering out at her from the row of shelves he was in.

 

“I’m fine,” Mal said, rubbing at her chest. “It’s nothing.”

 

Carlos didn’t look totally convinced, but he went back to his search.

 

Another couple minutes and Mal was once again moving on to another shelf and being hit by another pulse. This one, however, was less intense, only about as painful as the first one had been. Mal’s eyebrows furrowed, confused. She looked over at the shelf she’d just left and tentatively moved back in front of it. Again with the same sort of near dizzyingly intense pulse she’d felt the second time. Only having braced herself for it kept another gasp from being ripped from her throat.

 

“Okay,” Mal whispered when she could speak, a hand pressed firmly to her chest as if that would prevent any more pulses from attacking her. “Okay, is this some sort of sadistic game of ‘hot and cold?’”

 

Still no answer, but she wasn’t really expecting one. She did, however, figure that the magic must have latched on to her desire to find a useful book and, without being given specific direction on _how_ to help her, had figured out its own way of informing her on where to look. Unfortunately, this meant that Mal was left like a fish out of water, trying to figure out what, exactly, the magic needed from her or if it was possible to re-form it after it’d already been set on a course of action.

 

Biting down on the inside of her cheek, she decided she may as well at least _try_ to take back control. She placed a fingertip on the top, leftmost book on the shelf, pictured the magic sparking when it hit the book with the information she needed, and whispered, “Show me the book about magic, killer mist-creatures.” As she dragged her finger down the books’ spines, a glittering, black trail was left in its wake. Three rows in and it finally went off, like a tiny firework, startling her. Feeling a rush of giddy excitement, Mal snatched up the book and started flipping through it. The magic was still trailing from her fingertip, calm and glittering again, but growing fainter as she rapidly turned the pages.

 

With a jolt of apprehension, Mal realized she could feel the magic inside of her dwindling.

 

She was running out.

 

“Come on,” Mal mumbled. “Come _on_.”

 

When a weak burst went off, another tiny firework, much more pitiful than the first had been – only the faintest bit of magic resettling into her body – Mal almost cried out in elation. As it was, she fumbled the book, nearly dropping it and losing her hard-won page, and a wide, triumphant smile stretched across her face.

 

The section of the book the magic had led her to, hand-written in worn ink and a fancy, but, thankfully, legible writing style, was titled ‘Grudges.’ Mal skimmed the page, her frown deepening the more she read.

 

The gist of it came out to ‘corrupted magic.’ Magic, Mal realized, that must have gotten onto the Isle when Carlos’s machine punched a hole in the dome. Magic that had avoided being drawn in by any of the hallowed-out vessels scattered throughout the Isle or any of the _people_ capable of using it. Magic that, left to its own devices had been infected by the malice permeating the Isle, the malignance weighing it down, giving it form, giving it an endless raging purpose.

 

The bottom of the page stated, simply: ‘To rid oneself of a Grudge, one must give it what it wants.’

 

Mal turned the page, hoping for some sort of further instruction on how to deal with it or destroy it, but all she was met with was an illustration. It looked similar to the creature they had seen, though this one seemed to have taken inspiration from birds rather than the more wolf-like figure of the Isle’s own Grudge. It looked as though it had been drawn in haste, more of a sketch than a proper drawing – angry pen strokes, brash and aggressive, made it’s body, strived to encapsulate its intangibility; its beaked mouth was a gaping maw; its eyes seemed to have been brutally scribbled on, large circular scribbles, staring unseeing right at Mal, only a weak imitation, but somehow still so perfectly able to conjure up the enraged, bottomless pits of the creature’s eyes that it made Mal’s heart stutter.

 

She could practically feel the echo of its anger inside of her, feel how it’d clouded her head, invaded her body.

 

All that anger and nowhere to direct it but out.

 

No direction to take but violence.

 

Violence and death and misery churning out more violence and death and misery as the creature stalked the forest, anger and hatred boiling to the point of torture for something that was, according to the book, not actually built to contain anger and hatred in the first place. Anger and hatred that the creature – the magic – would not have been subjected to in the first place were it not for the people of the Isle.

 

Mal folded the page and closed the book.

 

She felt sick. _Again_.

 

It seemed like since yesterday she only _ever_ felt sick

 

An unplaceable sickness, one she’d felt before, certainly, but that she’d never been given a name for, never been taught how to deal with. Perhaps it something her mother and the rest of the adults around her just didn’t experience.

 

It was like an infection of the mind or the soul and each time she felt it, it would aggregate. All at once, she felt it for Uma and for Evie and now for this creature and at this point so much of it was clogging up her veins that Mal felt certain that if any more was added to what she’d already accumulated, she would die.

 

Mal clutched the book tightly in her hands, her nails digging deeply into its leather cover.

 

She looked up and saw Evie, still quite a few bookshelves away from her. Evie’s mouth was moving with the names of the books she was skimming; either tasting the words on her tongue or engaging in an unconscious habit. She was also scratching at one of her shoulders and when Mal spotted the gauze, unignorable against the brown of her skin, Mal felt like her stomach dropped to her feet.

 

The gauze, still there from the night before, proclaimed itself a testament to Evie’s fear, to the ‘what if’s.

 

What if Mal had failed and Evie was scarred?

 

What if Evie would never be able to stand to look at her skin again?

 

What if it was all Mal’s fault?

 

The question was like a lance of ice through Mal’s gut, it’s cousin – _Do you think you forced them?_ – surging up to keep it company, and before Mal could even think about it she was walking over to Evie, no plan in mind, but the desperate, pressing need to do _something_ pushing her forward.

 

She stopped beside Evie, leaning against a bookshelf, and waited while Evie finished up skimming through the row she was in the middle of.

 

The instant the last title had been mouthed off, Evie turned her attention to Mal. “Did you find something?” she asked, her gaze falling to the book in Mal’s hands.

 

A beat passed, then two. Mal’s insides were a swirl of chaos and she couldn’t even begin to think of how to fix it.

 

“Mal?” Evie was looking at _her_ now, watching her closely, her eyebrows furrowed. “Are you okay?”

 

Mal opened her mouth, closed it. Tried again, settling on, “Are _you_ okay?”

 

“Am…” Evie paused. “Am _I_ okay?” She twirled her hair around her a finger, untwirled it, twirled it up again, then finally said, “I’m fine,” slowly, carefully. “But are _you_ fine? Because you’re worrying me a bit.”

 

Mal pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to bring up the scarring, specifically, but… “I keep thinking about it,” she said, softly, her eyes slipping closed. Somehow it was easier to talk when she couldn’t actually see Evie in front of her. “The fact that you got hurt.”

 

“Oh.” Evie sounded surprised. “I’ve actually been thinking the same about _you_. You know, I realized I never thanked you.”

 

Mal’s eyes snapped open. “What?” she asked, the question tumbling out, utterly bewildered.

 

Evie was back to staring at the book in Mal’s hands, still toying with her hair. “You got hurt saving me,” she explained.

 

“But you only got attacked in the first place because I wanted to figure out what was going on.” The words left Mal in a rush, the sick feeling attached to them welling up and oozing out over them.

 

Now it was apparently Evie’s turn be baffled, her own, “What?” slipping from her lips the same as Mal’s had. “What do you mean?”

 

Mal pushed off the bookshelf, shaking her head. “I mean, if I’d just gone to deal with this problem on my own, this,” she gestured towards Evie, “wouldn’t have happened. None of you even wanted to come in the first place. You shouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

 

“Mal,” Evie said, grasping Mal’s shoulders and looking at her intently, “do you think me getting hurt is your fault?”

 

Mal stared resolutely off to the side, but apparently her lack of an answer was enough of one for Evie.

 

“That’s ridiculous!” Evie exclaimed. “It’s not like you _made_ me come. It was my decision. I _wanted_ to. All of us did.”

 

Mal grimaced. “Yeah, but I’m still the reason you came. I-” Mal froze, the rest of the sentence – ‘I messed up’ – dying in her throat as she was reminded of something.

 

It started with one a memory from years ago and morphed into another, both from way back when Mal was maybe four or five.

 

First, an older woman, exasperated but oddly kind, gripping Mal’s arm in one hand, firmly enough to keep her in place but not enough to hurt, while she had picked up the small flowerpots that had fallen off of the table Mal had bumped into with the other. Mal had struggled against her the whole time, all the way up until the last flowerpot had been replaced on the table and suddenly a piece of candy was being waved in front of her face. She’d instantly stopped fighting for freedom and, instead, swiped for the candy.

 

“Ah-ah!” the woman had said, pulling the candy out of Mal’s reach just before her tiny, sticky fingers could close around it. “Not yet, you don’t. You’re going to listen to me first. Can you do that? I’m about to teach you something very important. Can you listen?”

 

Mal had pouted and stomped a foot. “Give me!” she’d yelled, glaring at the woman.

 

For her efforts, she’d gotten a click of the woman’s tongue and a shake of her head. “You can have the candy after you listen. Do you understand?”

 

Mal, still pouting, but with a treat on the line, had nodded.

 

“Good. Now, do you know what you say when you mess up? Like what happened here?” She’d gestured towards the table and the flowers – all rather pitiful even before the fall, to be honest –with the hand holding the candy.

 

Mal had looked between the table, the candy, and the woman and then shaken her head.

 

“You _apologize_ ,” the woman had said. “When you mess up and you didn’t mean it, you say ‘I’m sorry.’ And then the other person forgives you if they want to. Can you do that?”

 

Mal had wrinkled her nose, but ultimately, her eyes locked on the candy, she’d listened, repeating the words, “I’m sorry.”

 

The woman had nodded. “Good. And I forgive you. Now remember that, will you?” She’d then presented the candy to Mal who had taken it, happily, and the second Mal was set free, she was gone.

 

The second memory’s context was lost – whether because it was ultimately inconsequential or because it had been blown away by the aftermath, Mal wasn’t sure. It picked up with clawed hand gripping Mal’s chin hard enough to bruise, nails digging into cheeks chubby with baby fat, and eyes perilously wet with tears, causing her mother’s face to blur before her to the point of being nothing more than shapes and colors.

 

“You don’t grovel like a dog,” Maleficent had hissed, her voice nothing but disgust and contempt. “Where did you even learn that word?” Her nails had dug in even deeper, drawing a whimper from Mal that had gone ignored. “‘Sorry’” Maleficent had spat, jerking Mal roughly as her tears had begun to spill, “is for the powerless, the pitiful, the worthless, the _human_. Is that all you’re going to grow up to be?” Maleficent’s voice had risen as she’d gone on, growing to a booming shout that left Mal trembling even more horribly than she’d been already. “Will you be nothing more to me than a _disappointment_?” Maleficent had then shoved Mal, releasing her from her grasp and sending her toppling to the ground as her feet stumbled over each other, her bottom taking the brunt of the fall.

 

Mal, crying in earnest now, had pleaded with her mother, a string of denials that Mal couldn’t even really remember now, washed away with the tears though her mother’s words had still persevered. Something to the effect of ‘No, mommy, I won’t be a disappointment’ and ‘I won’t be worthless’ and ‘I won’t grow up wrong,’ all wrapped up in the pretty little bow of ‘I’ll never use that word again.’

 

And now, Mal stood before Evie, her tongue numb and a wave of nausea rolling over her. “I…” Mal repeated. “I- I just…”

 

Evie’s hands were running up and down Mal’s biceps gently, soothingly, almost enough that it didn’t sting the remnants of her burns. “I don’t blame you for what happened,” Evie said. “And I really don’t want you to blame yourself for it either. Trust me, if I didn’t want to be involved in this situation, I wouldn’t be here now, trying to help find something we can use for a new plan of attack.”

 

Mal took a step forward and dropped her head to Evie’s shoulder. “You really think what happened wasn’t my fault?” she asked.

 

“It definitely wasn’t.”

 

Mal wasn’t sure she believed that, but it took a bit of the edge off the sick feeling. “Then me getting hurt saving you wasn’t your fault either.”

 

At that, Evie faltered.

 

Mal snorted, turning her head, her nose brushing Evie’s neck. “Don’t be hypocritical,” she murmured. And the word ‘sorry’ was like lead in her stomach, but… “If you’re,” she paused, licked her lips, hesitantly tried out, “ _forgiving_ me, then you have to let me forgive you, too.” Saying it felt dangerous and embarrassing and freeing all at the same time.

 

And when Evie said, “Alright. We both forgive each other and nobody did anything wrong,” back, it was like a weight had been lifted from Mal’s lungs.

 

They stood there for a few more moments, Mal taking the opportunity to reorient herself before she straightened up. “By the way,” she said, “I found the book we need.”

 

Evie jolted. “You did!?” she exclaimed. “The one you’re holding?”

 

“Yup.” Mal held it up for Evie to look at and glanced back over her shoulder towards the entrance. “And we should probably get out of here. Facilier isn’t going to stay out of his office forever.”

 

Evie nodded. “Yeah, we’ve probably already been here longer than we should have.” She pulled away from Mal, going to grab the stack of books she’d accumulated. Mal helped her, announcing to the room that they had what they came for and it was time to run.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Leaving Dragon Hall was only slightly more difficult than sneaking in had been. Jay had had to relock the door and there was really nothing they could do about the sleeping spider except hope it wouldn’t be overly suspicious. Plus Evie, Mal, and Jay were more weighed down than they’d been when they’d arrived, distributing Evie’s book hoard between the three of them, unable to fit all of them into the bag they’d come with, and they’d finally had a near run-in with Facilier, resulting in a mad dash to hide in the nearest classroom until he had safely passed.

 

Regardless, they got out undetected and, in light of their success, they decided to celebrate with lunch. They congregated in the back corner of the nearest restaurant, placing their orders and waiting for their food to arrive before Mal passed around the book, open to the page she’d found.

 

“What does it mean we’re supposed to give it what it wants?” Uma asked, pushing the book away from herself in annoyance. “All it _wants_ is to kill.”

 

Mal shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, that’s what it seems like. So we just need a different plan. Something to, I don’t know,” she took a bit of a few fries, “contain it?”

 

Carlos scoffed. “What? Like the barrier?”

 

All eyes immediately turned towards Carlos while his, meanwhile, went wide.

 

“No,” he said. “No, it’s _not_ possible!”

 

Evie tossed a fry at him, intentionally aiming poorly enough for Carlos to dodge out of the way. “Says the guy who made you-know-what.” She raised her eyebrows.

 

Carlos sputtered in response. “That is _totally_ different than what you guys are suggesting.”

 

“Technically you suggested it,” Jay said.

 

“And it was a bad suggestion. A horrible suggestion. It’s not-,” he paused. “Okay, so maybe it’s possible, but it’s not _feasible_!”

 

“Hold on. What’s the ‘you-know-what?’” Harry asked, leaning across the table. He pulled his drink with him, taking a sip out of its straw.

 

“Secret,” Carlos, Evie, Mal, and Jay all said at once.

 

“Oh, that’s not suspicious at all,” Harry replied, his voice practically dripping with sarcasm.

 

“You actually think you could recreate the barrier?” Uma asked, reaching over to steal a couple of Mal’s fries, an endeavor that she won at the cost of half the fries being spilled out over the table.

 

Carlos made a kinda-sorta gesture with his hand. “I mean, it’d be small scale and it wouldn’t created through magic, I’d have to sort out how to do it with science. And, yeah, sure, I’ve, um, done _experiments_ with the barrier before and they’ve had effects. So, theoretically, it could be possible if I could figure out what wavelength the barrier is running at to prevent the flow of magic into and off of the Isle. But! I’d also have to figure out how to make it deploy and how to harness that wavelength in the first place and-” he stopped, cutting himself off, the wild gestures his hands had been doing coming to a stop along with his words. “Anyway. Possible, yes. But it’d take time.” He turned to Mal. “You’ve got magic, can’t you do it?”

 

Mal shook her head, grabbing Carlos’s water and taking a drink. “Nope. I’ve pretty much used it all up. Either you science us up a barrier, or it’s not happening.”

 

Carlos groaned, dropping his head to the table. A long moment passed, everyone still staring right at him, then, “Fine!” he exclaimed, slamming his hands down on the table and pushing himself back up. “Fine! Okay! Alright! Give me,” he bit down on his bottom lip, then blew out a long breath, “a week?” He grimaced, then nodded. “Yeah. A week.” He dragged his hands through his hair, ruffling it and with a confidence he very much didn’t seem to feel, said, “I can totally do this in a week.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up at lesbianfog.tumblr.com


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Motivation- and energy-wise I’ve had a bit of tough couple of weeks, but I did my best. I’m not actually sure how I feel about how this chapter turned out, but it’s done and I did hit the scenes that I wanted to even if they didn’t turn out exactly how I originally figured they would so. Hopefully it’s okay.
> 
> As a side note: I realized I never talked about how I’ve altered the main villains in my universe. So! Cruella’s and Maleficent’s actresses are who I picture when I’m writing about them, but I picture Jafar’s animated movie self and an altered version of Grimhilde’s animated movie self (she actually gets physical description in this chapter so you’ll see what I’m doing with her). I also don’t like the way ‘Descendants’ utilized mental illness with the villains to make them unstable and ridiculous, so I’m throwing that out and instead writing them as worn down by their failures (with the exception of Maleficent who still believes she has a chance of one day breaking out and getting revenge) and frustrated with the lives they’ve been relegated to.
> 
> Warnings: 1. Improper binding; 2. Physical abuse of Jay as a younger child; 3. Mentions of controlling abuse of Evie and a more blatant depiction of her skewed sense of self-worth in relation to her appearance; 4. More violence of the monstrous creature variety; 5. And a little more of the same type of self-harm that’s been appearing with Mal

After their celebratory lunch the six of them parted ways, planning to meet up at the same restaurant in a week. Jay and Mal, Evie and Carlos, and Uma and Harry grouped off, heading in the same directions if not to the same places.

 

Mal and Uma parted with a clasp of their hands, a, “See you around,” from Mal, and a, “Don’t miss me too much,” from Uma – the underlying message of their ongoing truce wrapped up tightly in the gesture and the words.

 

Uma still looked tired, just as tired as she’d seemed when they’d run into each other the day before, her smug grin only seeming to be at half power and the delivery of her quip more automatic than purposeful. Mal may have held Uma’s hand a bit longer and squeezed it a bit harder than necessary, but neither of them said anything about it. In fact, as Mal let go of Uma’s hand, she felt like a lot was going unsaid, too much maybe – it made her chest feel odd and left her antsy.

 

Parting from Evie was just as strange.

 

Mal wanted to ask if Evie was going to remove the gauze, but the words were like acid on her tongue and as badly as she wanted to let them out, she didn’t want risk the damage they could cause. And at Evie’s, “See you tomorrow,” Mal had felt the burning need to do _something_ , which was ridiculous because she’d _already_ done something. They’d talked it out! The situation was resolved! Finished! Okay!

 

Or, it _should_ have been okay.

 

It should have been okay, but leaving Evie in that moment was one of the hardest things Mal had ever done. Leaving her instead of acting on the urgency surging through Mal’s body. Leaving her instead of clasping Evie’s hands or gently gripping her face or pulling her close. Leaving her instead of begging, begging, _begging_ for forgiveness a second time – and maybe a third, fourth, fifth time, too, for that matter – if Evie got home and removed that gauze and it turned out that Mal had failed and there was nothing they could do about it.

 

Leaving her and not turning back, because if Mal turned back she wasn’t sure she’d be able to look away.

 

Mal and Jay had been walking in silence for a few minutes – the cacophony of the people around them keeping the air plenty saturated with noise without their input – when Mal threw her head back, pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, and groaned. Jay’s hand loosely circled her bicep, just there to make sure she didn’t walk into anybody or anything so long as she wanted to walk a crowded street blind, and Mal was thankful for the excuse to stay how she was and groan a second time.

 

At that Jay laughed a little bit, but his hand squeezed Mal’s arm in sympathy. “You okay?” he asked.

 

“Yeah,” Mal replied, the word coming out on a gust of air. “Totally fine.” Totally fine even though her chest felt like it was filled with rocks and her stomach was turning and her body was still aching and all she wanted to do was lay down and pass out for a while and… and not go home.

 

As they walked, Mal lowered her head, letting her hands slip so her fingertips, rather than the heels of her palms, were pressing into her eyes. The air around her stunk of sweat and rot and misery and she could feel a headache coming on, but Jay’s hand on her arm, at least, was a grounding sensation. She had the faint thought that if leaving her eyes covered would keep Jay’s hand there, then she’d spend the whole walk blind.

 

“Hey, M?” The words were said softly as Jay veered the two of them off somewhere and brought them to a halt. Mal figured he must have pulled them into an alley since the noise had dulled slightly and no one was bumping into her like she was holding up foot traffic.

 

“Hm?” Mal reluctantly dropped her hands to her sides. They _were_ in an alley, grimy and dim, empty except for them and a few stray cats.

 

Jay leaned back against one of the walls, Mal allowing herself to be tugged with the movement. His hand slid down her arm until it was curled around her wrist and then he was playing with her fingers. Mal glanced towards the mouth of the alley, making sure no one was watching them. Not seeing any prying eyes, she decided not to pull away.

 

“You really think we’re going to win this?” The question was casual, too casual for the weight it carried, almost like it wasn’t what Jay actually wanted to ask.

 

Mal shrugged. “If Carlos really comes through with something we can use to contain the Grudge, yeah, I think so. After that, what happens with it can be someone else’s problem.” Mal’s mouth twisted up a bit. “My mother will probably want to get her hands on it. She might know a safe way to absorb the magic and maybe it’ll be enough for her to break down the barrier.”

 

Jay’s fiddling with her fingers stopped. “Right.” A tension had taken hold of his body. He released Mal’s hand and it dropped uselessly to her side. “We’re doing this for your mom.”

 

Mal moved to lean against the wall next to Jay, just a whisper of space between them – if he wanted, he could easily start playing with her fingers again. She wasn’t sure what to say to his statement or even what he meant by it, so she let them lapse into silence.

 

A few moments later it was broken by Jay, turning to her and saying, “Want to go to the hideout?”

 

Mal raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have to go home?”

 

She knew Maleficent wouldn’t miss her if she were gone for a few days, but Jafar expected Jay to keep the business running with the things he brought in to be sold. He wouldn’t hit Jay for his absence – hadn’t done that for a few years now, back when Jay and Mal hadn’t been much more to each other than familiar faces and ‘that annoying kid down the road who stole the thing _I_ was planning to steal before I got the chance to’ – but Jay could still be in for one hell of a rant and would probably get his allowance for the week cut if he stayed away from home for much longer.

 

“Don’t want to,” Jay replied, shrugging.

 

Mal hummed.

 

Jay seemed completely unconcerned about the thought of punishment and Mal supposed that made sense. There wasn’t much to fear in getting yelled at or having his allowance cut when those possibilities were compared to what he’d had to deal with _before_. Jay’s fear of his father seemed to have evaporated over time, diminishing more and more as the years passed, and since he’d never had the same sort of devotion and respect that Mal felt for her mother, not even that was left behind to temper the change.

 

Mal couldn’t help but think about how different his attitude was compared to that day years ago when the shift had first been set into motion.

 

They’d been 11 or 12 and Mal had been recharging in one of her and Uma’s old hiding places. She’d constantly worried, using them, that she’d end up running across Uma eventually and that that would disrupt the rhythm they’d fallen into – because what does one do when they run across someone they’re supposed to hate, now, when that person is at their lowest, or vice versa, and the two of them have had years of sharing each other’s pain and vulnerability, years that don’t simply vanish, years that cling to one’s heart and that they know would cry out for action were the situation to manifest, action they know that can no longer be taken.

 

Mal hadn’t known what she’d do if that happened, but she also hadn’t been able to make herself stop frequenting her and Uma’s hiding places.

 

She’d been comfortably tucked away – out of sight and out of reach – when Jay had burst in, disheveled, looking behind him like he was running from something and almost tripping over Mal where she’d been sitting on the ground. She couldn’t fit into the nooks and crannies she and Uma used to squeeze into, but up until that very moment she’d never needed the additional safety to avoid people. Jay had been the first to ever stumble upon one of the hideaways.

 

Mal had shot to her feet, ready to tell Jay off and wrestle him if she had to, to get him to leave because this had been _her_ place and she hadn’t been about to share it with anyone. But then he’d turned and looked at her, his eyes frantic and a mark on his cheek so red it was practically glowing, and Mal had taken a step back instead, startled. She’d instinctively raised a hand to her own cheek, wincing in sympathy pain. Jay, meanwhile, had been gasping.

 

He’d looked at Mal, then back the way he’d come, then, with a shake of his head, he’d pushed past Mal and sat down as far back in the little hideaway as he could get. He’d drawn his knees up, resting his head on them, and proceeded to ignore Mal.

 

A minute later and he had still been gasping, like he couldn’t quite catch his breath, and Mal had been sick of standing around like she didn’t belong in _her own hideaway_ , so she’d gone over and sat near him. They weren’t close enough to touch, but they _were_ close; close enough that, now, Mal had been able to see the way Jay was trembling and, from the wide armhole of his tank top, she’d caught a glimpse of the gauze wrapped around his chest.

 

There was nothing she could have done about the trembling, but when she spotted the gauze she’d said, “If you take the gauze off, you’d probably actually be able to breath.” Even though her voice was soft, it’d still felt too loud against the quiet rasps of Jay’s breaths.

 

“Fuck – off,” he’d gasped out.

 

Mal had shrugged, turning away from him and pretending to mind her own business though her ears remained intensely focused on Jay. Despite his apparent annoyance with her suggestion, it was only a few seconds later that Mal heard the rustle of clothes moving and then gauze being unwrapped, followed by coughing. Afterwards, Jay’s breaths had evened out rather quickly and Mal had finally relaxed for the first time since he’d stumbled upon her.

 

“So,” Mal began, tentative, but burningly curious, “what happened?” Whatever was going on with Jay, it wasn’t normal. She’d never seen anyone look so… shaken. Hunted. Like the world had been falling down around him.

 

The last thing Mal had been expecting was for Jay to start laughing, a manic, incredulous kind of laugh, as if he hadn’t been able to believe he was laughing either. Not even remotely trying to get himself under control, Jay had said, “I threatened to kill him,” then dissolved into laughter so intense that Mal didn’t think he could have managed to explain further even if he’d tried.

 

At his words, Mal’s head had shot in his direction, her eyes wide. She hadn’t had to ask who Jay meant, the mark on his cheek and his crazed demeanor laid it out simply enough that it was Jafar. She’d wanted to ask if he’d gone insane or had a death wish, but she didn’t. She’d figured there was no way Jay hadn’t been asking himself the same things and she hadn’t wanted to make the breakdown he was having worse.

 

When his laughter had finally petered out, it’d shifted into sniffles which had then quickly turned into sobs. Mal had scooted closer to him. Close enough that their shoes touched.

 

Close enough that Jay could have reached out for her if he’d wanted to. He hadn’t, in the end, but it’d still felt important, to both of them, that he could have.

 

It was after that run in with each other that they’d started spending more time together.

 

It wasn’t something they talked about, though a few days after it’d happened Jay had told her more of the story – how Jafar, incensed, had been shouting at him; how he’d hit him so hard Jay’s sight had whited out for a few moments; how Jafar had been moving to hit him again when Jay, on some wild instinct had lunged for the nearest means of protection and come back wielding a dagger, the words, “If you touch me again, I’ll kill you,” flying from his mouth with hardly a thought; how Jafar had faltered and Jay, realizing what he’d done, had ran, fast and hard, not stopping until he came across Mal’s hideaway, the dagger no longer in his hand, apparently having slipped from his grip at some point.

 

Mal had never asked about the aftermath, what had happened when he’d gone home, but ever since then she’d never seen Jay with injuries that couldn’t be accounted for by fights with kids around their age or general recklessness. Whether Jafar had genuinely become afraid of Jay or had reevaluated his treatment of him, Mal wasn’t sure, but she felt fairly confident in saying that, whatever the reason, Jafar didn’t hit Jay anymore and likely never would again.

 

Still, Mal was planning to ask him if it was really such a good idea to test his father’s patience by staying out even longer, but before she got the chance Jay was speaking again.

 

“You know, Malva caught me stealing while we were at her place,” he said, thumping his head back against the bricks of the wall he was leaning on, “but she didn’t get mad. Like, _at all_. It was weird.”

 

“ _She_ was weird,” Mal said, like the distinction mattered.

 

Jay looked over at her, smiling slightly. “Super weird. But that wasn’t even the weirdest part. She actually _gave_ me some things and told me to take care of myself.” He shook his head. “It was probably the freakiest thing I’ve ever experienced.”

 

Mal snorted, then started giggling and it wasn’t long before Jay was laughing with her, the two of them slipping into hysterics and scaring the cats in the alley away.

 

Mal was laughing so hard it almost felt like she was sobbing.

 

When their laughter finally started to die out, Mal turned to Jay, amusement still pulling at her lips and leaving her body lax.

 

“So,” she said, “the hideout.”

 

“Even if you don’t want to go, that’s where I’ll be,” Jay said, shrugging.

 

Mal dragged her tongue along her teeth, tapping her fingertips on her collarbone, thinking about it. She didn’t want to go home and even if she did, she knew that she’d probably end up slipping away to the hideout later anyway, so it wasn’t long before she was nodding. “I’ll go. But, for the record, if you get yelled at and have your allowance cut because you decided to stay out, I _tried_ to warn you.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Jay said, waving away her concern. “Consider me warned.”

 

He pushed off the wall, Mal falling into step with him. They walked back into the fray of bodies and voices and, even though there was no reason for it this time, Jay wrapped a hand around Mal’s bicep. She stared at it; his grip was loose enough that she could shake him off it she wanted to, but she didn’t.

 

“Speaking of warnings: M,” Jay said softly, his voice nearly lost to the sounds around them, “I’m with you all the way, you know that. But I have to be honest.” He shook his head, his expression pinched. “The thought of giving your mom the Grudge’s power makes me kind of nervous.”

 

Mal stared at him, disturbed. Her mother gaining power was supposed to be the best possible outcome, the one that would mean retribution for all of them, the one that _everyone_ was supposed to want, except maybe Uma because she hated her.

 

Jay though; Jay was supposed to want it.

 

He wasn’t supposed to agree with…

 

He shouldn’t have been like…

 

He couldn’t just give voice to…

 

Jay glanced at her and Mal forced her eyes forward, her eyebrows furrowing, her pulse quickening, her thoughts racing.

 

Jay’s words were like a catalyst and the avalanche it caused was comprised of Mal’s memories. Every instance her mother had made her nervous – had made her downright _terrified_ – danced across her mind, drenched in the tantalizing question, a question that she knew shouldn’t have existed, always, in the back of her mind, a question that was too close to heresy for Mal’s comfort: ‘How much worse would it have been if Maleficent had had more power?’

 

Mal wrapped her arms around herself, holding tight.

 

“Trust me, my mother gaining the power she needs is the best outcome,” she said, though what actually wanted to crawl its way out of her throat, desperate and raw with honesty, was, ‘Me too. It makes me nervous, too.’

 

Jay squeezed Mal’s arm but didn’t say anything else on the matter, seeming to have realized he’d crossed a line.

 

And Mal appreciated that – the fact that his silence allowed her to keep up the lie for at least a little bit longer. It settled her mind back into her skin, made everything easier, allowed her to slip back into the only role she knew how to play. She dropped her arms from around herself, threw back her head to an arrogant angle, and let herself feel certain of her words; ever the confidant daughter of the widely feared Maleficent, never faltering in her devotion, certain that every harmful action done towards her was for her benefit, learning experiences, both earned and necessary.

 

Jay’s hand squeezed tighter at the shift in her demeanor, more than an apology, now, a request for her to come back.

 

Instead, she sighed and shook him off.

 

It was fine. She was _fine_.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Evie and Carlos were meandering their way to their homes, both of them lost in their own thoughts.

 

Carlos had pulled a notepad and pen from his bag and was furiously writing what Evie figured must have been plans for the containment barrier.

 

Evie, walking beside him, was carrying his bag since some of her freshly stolen books were still stowed inside of it. Another bag, swiped from a market stall after they’d left the restaurant, was slung over her other arm, carrying the rest of the books. As they got closer to her house, she could feel herself getting more and more nervous, her thoughts fixating on removing her gauze and unveiling her skin.

 

Too quickly the busy streets gave way to the large plots of land belonging to the Isle’s few mansions. Evie’s feet were aching from all the walking she’d done over the past couple days and her shoulders were sore from the bags she was carrying, but all she felt when her mother’s castle finally came into view was dread.

 

Her steps faltered, Carlos continuing on for a few seconds more before he noticed she was no longer at his side.

 

Evie’s eyes were locked on the castle, its visage still small and distant, but enough to rattle her. She’d begun biting on her nails – a nasty habit her mother had tried repeatedly to break, yanking her hands away from her mouth when she was very young and then, later, tainting her nail polish with poisons that would make her ill. She knew she was probably going to be sick later, but she couldn’t make herself stop and, besides, it hardly seemed to matter since she felt so sick already.

 

Carlos glanced between Evie and the castle, jiggling the pen in his hand, his lips pressed together.

 

“Do you want to come to my house?” he offered. “My mother might be home, but we can probably slip around to my treehouse without her noticing.”

 

Evie hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. “No, no, I should go home.” She _needed_ to check under the gauze and she needed to be alone when she did it. “Thanks, though.” She smiled at him, but there was no feeling behind it.

 

If possible, Carlos began jiggling the pen even harder. “Alright. But if you change your mind later, I’ll probably be in the treehouse all night. Just, you know, be careful sneaking back there.”

 

Evie’s smile turned a little more genuine at that. “Okay,” she said, moving forward and grabbing Carlos’s hand in hers, the pen getting awkwardly squished between their palms. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

 

Carlos nodded, pulling the pen from their clasped hands and stuffing it into a pocket along with his notepad. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else, but ended up shutting it again with little more than a sigh.

 

Evie filled the rest of their brief walk with casual chatter, suppressing her nerves as best she could.

 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly enough because the second the castle’s door closed behind her and she was alone with her worries in the entryway her heart began to pound and her chest felt tight. Her mother wasn’t immediately in sight and was, frankly, the last person Evie wanted to deal with at the moment, so Evie carefully made her way up the staircase, trying to be as quiet as possible.

 

She made it to her room without incident, the door clicking softly shut behind her, and simply stood for a few moments, uncertain. Her room had multiple mirrors – one beside her closet, another across from her bed, and still another on her vanity – and they all seemed to taunt her, beckoning like gaping mouths that wanted nothing more than to swallow her up.

 

Her hands were shaking as she slowly approached the mirror across from her bed. This was decidedly different, so _very_ different, than the magic mirror in Maleficent’s castle that had shown her a reflection withered by age. Evie had been able to come to terms with aging; afterall, every year, with the exception of the villains who had been resurrected, people on the Isle got older – it was normal, she knew that it was normal, had been able to rationalize that it was normal, had been able to accept it and move past it, but this? Being scarred?

 

She removed her clothes, tracing her fingertips along the gauze. Her hands were sweating.

 

This was not natural. This was something men would abhor, something her mother would never forgive.

 

Evie grit her teeth, staring at her reflection as she began to unwrap the gauze from her torso. Her heart, practically beating out of her chest, came to an abrupt standstill the instant her skin peeked out. It was- there was-

 

She felt faint as she rapidly ridded herself of the rest of the gauze, her eyes staring in horror at the growing scar near her shoulder. The gauze in a heap at her feet, Evie raised a hand to touch, watching as her mirror image did the same, her head feeling distant and cloudy. The scar was jagged, lighter than the rest of her skin, a misshapen disruption.

 

As soon as her fingers made contact with it, a sob tore its way from her chest.

 

Feeling like someone else was controlling her body, Evie reached down to unwrap the gauze from her thighs. Finding more of the same sort of scars, she felt her head go even foggier, felt something like a crack splitting open her chest.

 

She blinked and found herself sitting down. Blinked again and she way laying, staring up at her ceiling.

 

Nothing existed but her breathing, just loud enough to reach her ears.

 

There was no coming back from this; she would never- she could never-

 

Evie’s life was different than those of her friends, was _supposed_ to be different. Her mother’s goal was the same – prosperity at any cost – but the cost she’d chosen to pursue, raised Evie to pursue, was _very_ different than that of Maleficent or Cruella or Jafar.

 

It was a path rooted intimately in the fact that, unlike the rest of Evie’s friend’s second parents, her father still came around.

 

He was actually welcome, with open arms even, while, for varying reasons Mal’s, Carlos’s, and Jay’s other parents weren’t. Cruella didn’t want to be tied down to a man. Maleficent simply didn’t want anything to do with a human. And, though Jay’s mother had actually raised him for a year or two, Jafar had eventually come for him, belief that a child may prove useful in suppling his store with objects to sell being the driving force behind his decision, and he’d forcibly taken Jay away, forbidding his mother from ever seeing him again to avoid the threat of him one day slipping away.

 

But Evie’s father: he was different, he served a _purpose_. And because of that _purpose_ she knew his face, knew his name, knew what his voice sounded like. He was taller than her, muscular, his skin lighter, his dark hair going gray, his wide smile all teeth. They didn’t look all that much alike, but he did have scars so, Evie supposed, her fingers lightly tracing the scaring on her shoulder, that was at least one trait that now definitely linked them together.

 

He’d always make a point of ruffling her hair when he came, even though she really didn’t want him to. But it wasn’t actually _her_ that he was ever there for.

 

His purpose was solely for the benefit of her mother. He was her financial support, what with Grimhilde never having worked a day in her life and not having planned to start after being banished to the Isle. He’d show up every other week in the late afternoon, ruffle Evie’s hair like she hated, and call out for her mother. Grimhilde would descend the staircase in one of her best dresses, always with a corset drawn tight and flowing skirts; the brown skin of her face and bosom lightened by powder; a dramatic dark red on her lips; her hair wrapped up tight. She’d radiate elegance, poise, delicacy – everything Evie was meant to emulate and strive for. They’d leave together, her father passing Grimhilde a pouch of coins as she draped herself onto his side, an accessory, a delicacy, a dream.

 

Grimhilde would return during the night, her steps echoing throughout the castle loudly enough for Evie to hear them in hear in her room. Evie would always try not to listen, but it would be impossible to ignore the loud slamming of her mother’s bedroom door and the screaming that would follow – enraged bellowing that would leave Evie trembling in her bed as she stared up at the shadows on her ceiling.

 

The next morning Grimhilde would be agitated, pacing the floors, pulling at her hair, barely intelligible grumbling about how she deserved better; so much better than the Isle could offer her – riches and power and fame the like of which ‘ _that man_ ’ was incapable of supplying. She’d turn on Evie the second she spotted her, circling her and subjecting her to an examination – she’d throw out critiques of Evie’s every flaw then pull out a tape measure and wrap it around Evie’s stomach and thighs, and if she clucked her tongue in disappointment Evie would know to expect her meals to be severely diminished over the next few days.

 

“You have to reel a man in,” Grimhilde would remind Evie as she finished up her inspection, practically growling it out through gritted teeth, nothing like the ideal of femininity she manifested for the public. “Imagine what we could do with more than one steady source of income?” She’d ask, then sigh, exasperated, and shove away from Evie as if she couldn’t bear the disgust of being in her presence for a moment longer. Her parting words would be left as a final, near fatal blow. “If only you were even half as beautiful as I am. We’d have men knocking down our doors to marry you already. It’d be so nice to have you finally be useful for something.”

 

And now… now…

 

Evie pressed a hand flat to the scar on her shoulder, felt she could cry but couldn’t get the tears out.

 

Now she was…

 

Her room was dark when the fog lifted enough from her mind for her to once again feel aware of herself, though her mouth felt firmly sealed shut. She pushed herself up, got to her feet, stared at the discarded clothes and gauze for a moment before kicking them under her bed to be dealt with later.

 

She moved to the closet and stared into its depths, swaths of clothes that she’d made for herself hanging up while shelves along the bottom half of it held any clothes that shouldn’t be hung. She considered grabbing pajamas and crawling into bed, shutting the world out for a few hours and definitely not showing up for school tomorrow, but instead – remembering Carlos’s invitation and very much not wanting to be alone – she pulled out an outfit. Malva’s clothes had been fine, but Evie’s were specially made, all of them very soft on her sensitive skin, either entirely made of her favorite material or having their insides lined with it. It felt good to be in her own clothes and, scars out of sight, she felt more grounded.

 

She pulled on a pair of shoes and slipped out of her room. She could hear pacing somewhere in the castle, but it didn’t seem to be nearby so she hurried down the stairs and out the front door.

 

The night air was cool on her skin as she ran just a bit down the road to Hell Hall. The mansion was encircled by a wrote iron fence, but it was nothing Evie couldn’t pull herself over with little more than possibly a few bruised from the tipped points of the posts digging into her stomach and legs. She dropped down on the other side and, giving the house as wide a berth as she could, made her way to the treehouse around back.

 

The treehouse’s single window showed a faint glow from the fairy lights that Evie knew were strung up inside. She climbed up the ladder and knocked on the hatch door which opened for her seconds later to reveal Carlos’s tired face.

 

“Evie,” he said, a small, forced smile on his lips. “Hey, come on in.”

 

Carlos retreated to his worktable as Evie pulled herself in. It was scattered with tools and parts and various scraps of paper covered in notes. Carlos looked frazzled, his hair much frizzier than it’d been the last time she’d seen him and sticking out wildly, indicating that he must have been dragging his fingers through it and pulling on it a lot. He fluttered about the worktable, a pen stuck behind one of his ears and another in his hand, and waved in the direction of a couple of throw pillows.

 

“You can sit down over there if you want.”

 

Evie nodded and sat down, making herself comfortable. She leaned back against the wall behind her, letting her head thump against it, and closed her eyes. It was soothing: nothing but the sounds of Carlos’s footsteps and his tinkering and the faint buzzing of the fairy lights above her.

 

She opened her mouth a few times, trying to get words out. She wanted to tell him. Needed to tell _someone_. It felt like ages before she was finally able to force out, “I think… I’m ruined.” The words stuck to her throat and felt thick in her mouth. All at once the sounds from Carlos stopped and the tears that hadn’t been able to come out earlier were spilling from her eyes. “I’m ruined,” she repeated, the words a broken whisper.

 

More footsteps, coming towards her, stopping in front of her. She swiped at her eyes and opened them. Carlos was kneeling in front of her, his expression tense, his hands hovering, like he thought he ought to touch her but didn’t want to presume.

 

“What happened?” he asked, though the way his eyes darted to the areas Evie had been hurt let her know that he already had a pretty good idea.

 

She shook her head; she didn’t want to say it. Instead she asked him, practically pleading, “How is anyone ever going to want me like this?”

 

Carlos pressed his lips together, scrubbed at his face, then puffed out a long sigh. “You’re still stunning, E.” She shook her head, but he just pressed on. “And you’re the smartest girl I know. You don’t need anyone to- to _want_ you.”

 

Evie scoffed.

 

“Really,” Carlos insisted. “You really, _really_ don’t. And I can see that you’re looking at me like I’m stupid, but… but I know I’m right.”

 

He bit down on his lip, rubbing at the back of his neck, the silence between them filled with nothing but Evie’s soft gasps and sniffles as she continued to cry, unable and not wanting to get herself under control. She knew Carlos meant well and she appreciated what he was trying to do, but, in the end, it didn’t change anything. Evie was ruined and no one would want her and she’d become utterly useless. It felt like someone had reached in and ripped her still-beating heart right out of her chest.

 

Carlos moved, sitting down beside her. “Can I?” he asked, gesturing towards her. She wasn’t sure what he was asking for exactly, but she nodded anyway – she could use a comforting touch. He leaned his head against her shoulder and grasped her hand, entwining their fingers together. He patted around beside him and pulled a roll of toilet paper from somewhere in the pillows, holding it up for Evie to take. “Here, for your nose.”

 

“Thanks,” Evie mumbled, fumbling with it single-handed. She managed to get herself some of the toilet paper and blow her nose, her tears starting to dry up, before Carlos spoke again.

 

“I don’t really know what to say here to make it better,” he began slowly. “But I’ll always be here for you, E. So will Mal and Jay. I know you meant it a different way but: _we_ want you. We’re always going to want you.”

 

Evie blinked her eyes rapidly, tears threatening to fall from them again. It wasn’t better, it was so far from better, the scars on her skin felt like a life sentence, but… It was something. She leaned her head on top of Carlos’s and squeezed his hand. After a few minutes of just sitting there, she felt well enough to ask, “So, how’s the project going?”

 

Carlos groaned and Evie smiled, an involuntary giggle jolting out of her.

 

“Don’t even get me _started_ ,” Carlos said, promptly before he jumped right into a long, complex explanation of his current theories and plans, throwing in a liberal amount of complaints about the limitations imposed on him because of his sub-par supplies and his having minimal information to work with. Evie nodded along, following most of it, though certain parts were a bit lost on her; biological sciences, rather than engineering and the like, were more her area of expertise.

 

When his rant finally came to an end, she patted him on the arm consolingly.

 

“Hey,” Carlos said, softly. “Do you want to help me sort out how to make this thing?”

 

Evie’s consoling patting had shifted into a soothing petting. “What?” she asked, her tone teasing. “You want me to be your beautiful assistant?”

 

Carlos pulled back to look at her, raising an eyebrow. “No, I want you to be my _brilliant_ _co-scientist_.”

 

Evie stared at him in surprise, then a large grin slowly spread its way across her face. “Okay,” she said, faint giddiness rushing through her, “okay, sure. Let’s see if we can make a containment barrier.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Uma and Harry had decided to head over to Ursula’s Fish and Chips, neither of them particularly feeling up to facing the crew just yet after failing to retrieve their missing crewmates. The crew generally didn’t hang around Uma’s mother’s place if Uma wasn’t there, none of them fond of Ursula, the righteous fury in their eyes each time they saw Uma with new bruises that they couldn’t account for a testament to that.

 

That being said, Gil was a special case due to his intimate relationship with Uma and Harry. He was sitting at a table, watching the door when they walked in, obviously waiting for them. His blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, his white skin heavily freckled. The second he spotted them his face positively lit up, practically beaming.

 

Uma beckoned him over, though with how fast he got out of his chair it probably wasn’t necessary. He came crashing into Harry, who grunted from the force of it, and held his hand out to Uma, a question. She grasped his hand in both of hers and pulled it to her lips, kissing his knuckles, heedless of the people around them. After the days she’d been having, she _needed_ this – needed the opportunity to let go and be soft.

 

“Come on,” she said, releasing Gil’s hand and turning, leading the way to her room. It was moderately sized, her bed in the far corner, a sofa and table near the door. She dropped down onto the sofa, Gil and Harry joining her, taking a seat on either side of her. She leaned her head back, draped an arm over her eyes and waited.

 

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Gil asked, “Did you find them?”

 

“No,” Uma replied. She didn’t try to temper her tone, didn’t want to, and was aware that she sounded desolate, so it wasn’t a surprise when she felt one of Gil’s hands on her shoulder and Harry pressing himself firmly against her side.

 

A kiss was pressed to Uma’s cheek by Gil, then he was saying, “I’ll be right back,” and slipping away. Uma lifted her head, dropping her arm from her eyes just in time to see him walking out of her door.

 

She let her head fall back again, but this time it landed on Harry’s arm, thrown across the back of the couch, encircling her shoulders. She turned towards him, his skin warm against her cheek and just let herself be held.

 

Gil came back with steaming cups, the smell of chocolate wafting off of them. He made his way over to the couch slowly, being careful not to spill. After he sat down, Uma reached for one only for Gil to gasp, suddenly, and swiftly set the cups down on the low table in front of them, hot chocolate sloshing a bit over their sides.

 

He swept Uma’s hand up in his own, asking, “What happened?”

 

Uma frowned. She’d honestly almost forgotten about the scars. “There’s a monster in the forest,” she said.

 

“It did this to you?” Gil’s fingertips traced lightly over her palm, making her shiver, and his eyes raised to meet hers.

 

“More like our precious Captain dived in to help with pinning it down and this was a side effect,” Harry replied before Uma had a chance to. He grabbed her other hand, examining the scarring there. “Remarkably heroic, you know,” he whispered.

 

“Dangerous words for an Isle full of villains and criminals,” Uma replied, a sly half-smile pulling at her lips.

 

Harry grinned back at her. “Good thing you’re not afraid of danger.”

 

A kiss to her palm drew her attention back to Gil. He was also smiling at her, but it was downright sappy and fond.

 

“I like them,” he said.

 

Uma raised her eyebrows. “My scars?”

 

Gil nodded. “They make you even more beautiful.”

 

Uma could feel herself flush and scoffed, pulling her hands back into her lap.

 

“No, I agree with him,” Harry said. “Nothing more stunning than battle wounds.”

 

Uma rolled her eyes. She hadn’t been self-conscious about the scars in the first place, but she couldn’t deny that the words made her feel pleased, a light, bubbly feeling sparking in her chest. “Both of you are being dramatic.”

 

“Can we really say it’s dramatic if it’s true?” Harry grabbed one of the cups of hot chocolate and passed it to Uma.

 

It sat, a comforting weight, in her hands and she took a sip. It was sweet on her tongue. Harry’s arm was still wrapped around her shoulders and Gil, taking the question a bit too seriously, was puzzling out the legitimacy of calling a true statement ‘dramatic’ at her side.

 

Uma let her eyes slip closed and allowed every pressing and unpleasant thing to slip away for the moment. She’d have to tell Gil and the rest of the crew about what happened in the forest and what they were planning to do to deal with it, but for now…

 

For now, this – just sitting and breathing and listening to the two people she cared about most talk back and forth. This was enough.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The week passed both much too quickly and agonizingly slowly. Carlos and Evie didn’t show up for classes at all and their group’s afterschool meet-ups were moved to Carlos’s treehouse. Mal and Jay couldn’t really do anything to help, except maybe pass the two of them things they asked for, but even sitting around being useless while they worked felt better than just going home and leaving them to it.

 

Multiple prototypes, a few minor explosions, and a whole week of little more than catnaps later Carlos and Evie had something. The dome wasn’t as large as Carlos wanted it to be, making their whole plan a bit more of a gamble, but it _was_ technically big enough. With the press of a button it would turn on after a four second delay, allowing it to be thrown like a grenade.

 

None of them were actually 100 percent sure it would work to contain magic since they had nothing to test it on, but Evie’s support and confidence in Carlos’s work made up for Carlos’s uncertainty, providing a buffer for all of his worries.

 

They met up with Uma and Harry at the restaurant, letting the two of them look the device over – Carlos hovering anxiously nearby the entire time they did so – then headed out.

 

When they reached town at the edge of the forest, Malva was sitting on the fountain, various children playing around her. She was watching their group as they came into view and gave a short wave when they got close. Carlos and Evie waved back, but Mal just stared at her as they walked by. She thought Malva mouthed the words ‘Be careful,’ but she couldn’t be sure. Either way, Malva didn’t move to stop them.

 

Their plan for navigating the forest was pretty much the same as it had been last time, only this time around they intended to stay out for longer, hoping that if they didn’t happen across the Grudge it would eventually come to them.

 

That was the attitude that found them resting in a small clearing after having scoured the forest for over an hour. The sun was setting, the shadows getting longer, the darkness mixing with the fog to make visibility even lower, and there was a slight chill to the air. They were thinking about just settling in for the next few hours, making themselves comfortable, the risk of getting lost wandering around in the dark too high.

 

Jay, Carlos, Uma, and Harry were sitting in a circle, playing cards. Evie had pulled herself up onto a low-hanging tree branch nearby to watch, swinging her legs, and Mal was standing in front of her.

 

Evie hadn’t said anything about what she’d found under the gauze and Mal hadn’t asked, despite the fact that the need to know was practically eating her whole. She didn’t want to push the matter and figured if Evie wanted to talk about it, or if there was even anything to talk about in the first place, Evie would have brought it up.

 

Instead, Evie seemed perfectly happy to talk about anything _but_ what had happened the last time they were in the forest. She was currently examining Mal’s hands, finishing up an attempt to convince Mal to let her give her a manicure, heedless of Mal’s argument that it’d just get ruined right away, when she sighed.

 

“M, don’t be a spoilsport,” she said, lowering Mal’s hands to her lap, keeping a light hold on them. She looked exhausted, the long days and longer nights spent up with Carlos having clearly caught up with her – her skin sallow and dark circles under her eyes. “Your cuticles look terrible and your nails need a trim. Let me do this for you.” A pout settled on her lips. “It’ll be something to look forward to after we’re finally done with this whole mess.”

 

Mal shook her head, but finally caved, saying, “Fine.”

 

Evie immediately lit up, bouncing a bit on the branch, a large smile on her face, and Mal found herself having to look away, suppressing a burst of butterflies in her stomach. “Really?” Evie asked, the word bubbly with excitement.

 

“Yes, really.”

 

Evie squeezed Mal’s hands, involuntarily pulling them closer to her and causing Mal to take a stumbling step forward, her body slotting in between Evie’s legs as Evie started talking again. “I know _exactly_ what I’m going to do. I’ll need to get some fresh nail polish first, but I promise you’re going to love it!”

 

“Right,” Mal said, extracting her hand from Evie’s and taking a couple steps back. It was then that she heard a faint rustling from somewhere behind them. She paused, peering past Evie, but couldn’t see anything.

 

“Mal?” Evie asked, her eyebrows furrowing as she turned to look in the direction Mal was looking. “Did you see it?”

 

“No, no I didn’t see anything.” She pressed her lips together, glanced back at the rest of their group. “I’m going to look around real quick.”

 

“What? _Alone_?” Evie’s head snapped back in Mal’s direction so fast Mal was almost surprised she didn’t hear her hair whip out behind her.

 

Mal shrugged. “I just want to do a walk around the perimeter. I shouldn’t even be out of sight.”

 

Evie frowned. “At least take the containment barrier with you.”

 

Mal’s eyebrows shot up. “And leave you guys without it? I don’t think so.” She placed a hand on Evie’s knee, comforting. “It’ll be fine.”

 

Evie stared at her hand. “I’ll walk with you.”

 

Mal felt her heart rate spike, the memory of Evie pinned slamming into her and a vehement, “No,” slipping out of her lips without her even thinking about it.

 

Evie’s staring immediately turned to glaring. “What do you mean ‘no?’ If it’s too dangerous for me, then it’s too dangerous for you.”

 

“Evie,” Mal started – not entirely sure how she was going to win the argument, just knowing that there was no way she couldn’t let Evie leave the relative safety of their group – but before she could continue, there was another rustling, louder, closer.

 

Evie must have heard it this time because she’d frozen, her body going stiff and her eyes going wide. “Where is it?” she whispered, the words coming out in a rush. She moved to push herself off of the tree branch, Mal grabbing her hips to help lower her down, both of them intently scanning their surroundings.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

It was dark now; if any residual sunlight was left it couldn’t reach this area of the woods. The moon, large and round, shone down on them instead, its faint, silvery glow enough to see by but doing little to cut through the fog.

 

Mal and Evie quickly made their way over to the others.

 

“We heard something,” Evie said as they got closer and the chatter that had started up in place the card game immediately came to a stop, everyone going from relaxed to hyper-vigilant and shooting to their feet in all of a second.

 

A minute passed in tense silence before there was the sound of swift footfalls and then the Grudge was bursting into the clearing. With the exception of its glowing red eyes – which Mal forced herself not to look at, not for too long at least – and gleaming white teeth, it practically blended in with the night. At the sight of it, Evie flinched into Mal and Carlos yelped.

 

Mal could hear collective shouting for Carlos to _throw the containment barrier already_ , but her eyes were locked on the Grudge as it bounded towards them. Carlos must have managed, though, because Mal saw a spark of metal gleaming in the moonlight as it sailed towards the Grudge and their entire group scattered. As Mal ran she kept her eyes on the creature, saw it catch the device in its mouth, saw it continue charging in the same direction. Mal’s gaze flitted over to where it was heading, a gasp tearing its way from her throat when she saw Carlos.

 

_Carlos_ who apparently hadn’t ran when the rest of them had; who was standing, as if paralyzed, a look of abject terror on his face.

 

“Carlos!” Mal yelled, already dashing back towards him and then throwing herself in the creature’s path just in time for it to collide with her.

 

It landed on top of Mal, the device dropping from its mouth and finally going off, the barrier encompassing both of them.

 

The Grudge’s front claws were digging into her shoulders, its paws blistering, its face close enough to Mal’s that the steam coming off of it was burning her skin.

 

Mal could hear screaming coming from all around her, but, with nowhere else to look, Mal once again she found herself being forcibly sucked in by the magnetism of the creature’s eyes, so encompassing that she could hardly even feel any pain.

 

From this close up, its eyes appeared to be a swirling mass – the red of blood, the red of betrayal, the red of heartache, the red of _agony_.

 

Mal felt like her head was swimming, nausea washing over her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. All she could see, think, feel were the pains wrapped up in the Grudge’s eyes – they infected her body, locked up her limbs, dragged dry sobs out of her chest.

 

The creature opened its maw, its teeth glistening, mouth a fathomless black hole. It unleashed a howl and Mal felt her heart shatter.

 

At the same moment of her falling apart, something finally seemed to click in place for Mal and she found herself screaming out, “ _I’m sorry_!” as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The words were wretched from her mouth, raw and aching and, in response, the howling stopped.

 

One paw slipped off of Mal and its eyes pulsed. Suddenly finding herself capable of movement again, Mal jerked herself upwards, wrapping her arms around the Grudge’s neck. No longer engulfed by its eyes, she could feel her skin screaming out from the burning pain of touching it.

 

“I’m sorry,” Mal whispered again. The words were like acid on her tongue; Mal wanted to pull them back, tainted as they were, but in the heat of the moment she could think of no other way to get the sentiment across, her brain running on desperation. At some point tears had begun freely falling from her eyes, her body shaking and her vision tunneling. The creature had started growling, a humming vibration that Mal could feel all the way down to her soul.

 

Mal, on some distant level where her consciousness still prevailed, remembered what the book had said about Grudges, that the magic wasn’t made for malice, and she mumbled, uncertain if the words were even actually leaving her mouth, the blood pounding in her ears too loudly for her to hear anything, “Don’t… don’t be angry anymore. I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_ that this happened to you.” A sudden idea came to her, a wild thought that maybe- maybe if the magic had a vessel it could disengage from the corrupting energy of the Isle, and she whispered, “Come to me; I’ll protect you.”

 

The Grudge’s form flickered and it must have understood what she meant, because in the next instant it vanished and Mal could feel it slipping into her body – her blood boiling and body convulsing, the magic pulsing through her veins, still hot and enraged, but settling. Mal was pretty sure she was screaming even as the agony faded, slowly being replaced a cool, soothing sensation, like a balm, an apology of the Grudge’s own.

 

When Mal’s screams died out, it was because the worst of the pain had faded. She found herself staring up at the sky and figured, blankly, that she must have collapsed backwards.

 

Her body throbbed, but the pain was still fading fast.

 

With a groan, she pushed herself up, and glanced around, spotting the device lying near her side. She grabbed it and jabbed her finger into the button, turning the dome off.

 

The instant it was down, Mal was mobbed. Evie was on her first, cupping her face, crying, dragging a hand through Mal’s hair, her touch gentle but desperate. Then Uma was pulling Mal back, away from Evie so she could look her over.

 

“Are you alright?” Uma asked.

 

Mal stared down at her body. Her brain felt fried. All she managed to get out was an, “Um,” before Jay was descending on her, scooping her up in his arms. She sucked in a sharp breath as what was left of her old and fresh injuries were jostled, but Jay barely spared her a wince in sympathy, too busy setting a fast pace out of the forest.

 

Mal was too tired to bother telling him that she was pretty sure she could walk and instead leaned into him and let herself be carried.

 

“That was bad. I _hated_ that.” It took Mal’s tired brain longer than it should have to place Carlos’s voice, sounding close, like he must have fallen into step with Jay. “If I never see another dog again, it’ll still be too soon.”

 

Mal lifted her head, looking over at him. “That wasn’t a dog,” she mumbled, feeling oddly defensive of it now that the magic was making itself at home in her body, especially since it had apparently felt driven to fix whatever damage it could.

 

“It was close enough,” Carlos replied.

 

Mal pressed a hand to her chest. She could feel the power singing through her body. It felt _good_. “Not really,” she whispered, quiet enough that she was pretty sure the only one who could actually hear her was Jay.

 

By the time they got out of the forest Mal was ready to be put down, reassuring everyone that the magic had fixed most of what was wrong with her – not quite able to get the job done without actual intention directing it – and that her biggest problem was that she wanted to go home and pass out.

 

There was a brief debate over whether or not they should go to Malva’s, but Mal didn’t really want to see her, their last conversation still sitting strangely with her, so Evie, Carlos, and Jay compromised with her, the four of them deciding to spend the night in their hideout, since they weren’t quite ready to part from her after what had happened.

 

Uma and Harry, on the other hand, decided they _were_ going to stay with Malva.

 

Before the two groups parted ways, Uma place a hand on Mal’s shoulder and said, “That didn’t go to plan at all.”

 

Mal shrugged. “I mean, the barrier worked.”

 

A beat passed and then they were both bursting into laughter, Uma somehow managing to gasp out, “Not the point,” while Mal was laughing too hard to even attempt to support her feeble defense of how the whole mess had played out. The laughter hurt Mal’s still aching body, but it also felt so, _so_ good.

 

When Uma finally pulled away, it was with a lighthearted, “I hope to never work with you again.”

 

Mal rolled her eyes, still smiling. “Same here.”

 

The walk to the hideout was quiet and when they arrived, they all squeezed themselves onto Evie’s bed since hers was the largest, though that definitely didn’t mean it was made to accommodate four people. It was far from comfortable, but Mal still found herself asleep in a matter of seconds.

 

~ ~ ~

 

It was mid-afternoon.

 

Classes had already started for the day, but Mal and Jay, at least, had no intention of going. Carlos and Evie had woken up in time to get ready and leave, both of them talking about how they’d missed too many days already as they bustled about, disturbing Mal’s and Jay’s sleep.

 

Mal had felt a light brush of Evie’s fingers through her hair before they left. It had roused her just enough for her to catch Evie’s hand as Evie had been slipping away so she could mumble out a, “Bye,” before she had once again been snuggling her sore body back under the covers and passing back out.

 

When Mal and Jay finally got up and ready – Mal, in the process, realizing that she once again couldn’t complete the healing of her injuries despite the fact that the magic was clearly straining to follow her directions; it was like there was a blockage or something and it was, frankly, pissing Mal off – they didn’t stick around the hideout long. Apparently Jay wasn’t in the mood for being cut off from pay two weeks in a row and the two of the snatched up a few things for him to take to Jafar as they made their way to their homes.

 

Mal on the other hand needed her first aid kit from her room, having taken the ointment she needed from the hideout to deal with her wounds over the past week. And, besides, she had to tell her mother _something_ about what she’d done since that’d been her whole goal in the first place. Maleficent would probably want to use Mal’s magic and-

 

There was a tight coiling sensation around Mal’s heart that had her gasping, the magic spiking as if with terror, an intense echo of the slight fear Mal felt at the thought of her mother studying her, then using her, then still finding her wanting – despite the risk she’d taken and the fact that she was the one who’d figured out how to coax the magic into using her as a vessel – and throwing her aside when all was said and done, like she was nothing more than a toy that had outlived its use.

 

“Mal?” Jay asked, urgently, suddenly very close to her side, a hand on her shoulder, the other hovering in front of her, watching her face.

 

Mal grasped his shoulder, her fingers digging in as she gasped until the tightness in her chest eased. She looked at Jay, chest still heaving as her breaths calmed, licked her lips. “Um, I’m, uh, I’m fine.”

 

Jay raised his eyebrows, incredulously. “Are you sure?”

 

Mal nodded, letting go of his shoulder and pulling away. She rubbed at her chest, but the magic had settled back into a gentle thrum, more apologetic pulses, similar to what she’d felt when it had first entered her body. “Yeah, it just-,” she started walking again, pushing through the people shooting her curious glances, “I don’t know, it reacted to something.”

 

“It? As in…” Jay lengthened his strides a bit to keep up with Mal, her pace getting faster and faster as her agitation grew.

 

“Yeah, _it_.” Mal really didn’t want to drop the word ‘magic’ in public, so she was relieved when Jay seemed to pick up on what she meant.

 

“Do you know what set it off?” He was sounding anxious now. “Like, gods,” he dragged a hand through his hair, whispering as much as he could while still having Mal be able to hear him over the sounds around them, “is this even safe? We don’t actually know any practical knowledge about this stuff. What if something’s wrong?”

 

Mal frowned, coming to a stop. They were right outside Jafar’s Junk Shop. She didn’t really want to talk about her anxieties about her mother – not the last time the topic had come up between them and certainly not now – so she just sighed and crossed her arms, once again insisting, “It’s fine. Seriously Jay, don’t worry about it.”

 

He didn’t look anywhere close to convinced, but he nodded anyway. “Okay. I’ll see you later then.”

 

Mal said her own goodbye and continued on to Bargain Castle. As she walked an outline of a plan was worked out in her mind; she’d take care of her injuries, maybe sleep some more because even though she’d woken up not too long ago she was already feeling tired again, and _then_ she would tell her mother about what had happened – embellish some details, omit others, make the whirlwind of a disaster come across more as a well-executed victory.

 

She felt rather sure of her intended course of action all the way up until she entered the castle and headed up stairs to the living area she shared with her mother. The walls seemed to be pressing in on her, the air stifling, the dim lighting foreboding – long established fear of disappointing her mother practically bled from the rooms of their living space, hidden away in memories of the time she’d cowered in that corner or the time she’d been tossed into that wall or all the times she’d let desperate promises to be better tumble from her mouth here and there and everywhere.

 

By the time she was coming to a stop in front of the throne room – having noticed her mother seated inside, flipping through a book – the magic was just as unsettled as she was, tingling discontentedly under her skin – and she was no longer sure she wanted to tell her mother anything.

 

She must have stood in the entryway too long, because Maleficent’s attention shifted, her eyes rising, pinning Mal even more deftly in place as she asked, “Did you need something?”

 

Mal intended to say ‘no,’ but instead found herself asking, “Why didn’t you want me to go near where the deaths were happening?” the feedback loop of anxiety from her and the magic, pushing her to test her mother’s reaction, telling herself that if Maleficent said she’d hired someone else to deal with it than Mal’s confession of handling it herself would probably be in the clear. If that wasn’t the case then, well… Mal wasn’t sure what that would mean for her, but she’d sort it out.

 

Maleficent raised an eyebrow, snapping her book shut. “I would have thought it’d be obvious,” she said, her tone implying that Mal was being particularly stupid. Mal just barely managed to hold back a wince. “You should _always_ wait for the weak to come to _you_ , begging for help. And when that happens, you take them for everything they have. If these deaths keep up people should be coming around any day now, offering us a small fortune to take care of the problem.”

 

As her mother spoke, Mal could feel the static of panic growing in her head. “Of course,” she whispered, hardly aware of her own voice. She backed away from the room, turned on her heel, and swiftly made her way to her bedroom, firmly shutting the door behind her.

 

Leaning back against the door, the static in her head was still going strong. “I messed up,” she whispered, then gasped, pressing a hand to her mouth. She could feel herself trembling as she pushed off the door and made her way further into her room. Her body’s aching reminded her that she’d wanted to dress her injuries and, as if on autopilot, she walked to her closet, slowly removing her clothes as she went.

 

She opened the closet’s doors, staring without really seeing for a moment, then shaking her head and locating her first aid kit. Grabbing it, she sat down and riffled through it, pulling out a near empty container of ointment, a roll of gauze, and medical tape.

 

As she set to work, Mal considered the possibility that her mother would forgive her for her disobedience when she learned that Mal had gained magic out of the deal. The thought was enough to dampen the buzzing in her head, but at the same time the fear of being used and discarded roared up with a vengeance. If she couldn’t follow simple orders and something that should have been obvious to her _hadn’t_ been, then what reason did her mother have to think her a worthy heir rather than a worthless accident, easily replaced by someone better?

 

Mal gritted her teeth, pressing her fingers into her wounds harder than necessary as she aggressively rubbed the ointment onto them.

 

As pain stung harshly up the arm she was assaulting, she wondered, for a second, if maybe being used and cast aside was really all she was good for, but before that train of thought could go too far a flash of anger rose up inside of her. She wasn’t even sure who she was angry at or what for, really – herself for messing up and for having such a self-pitying thought or her mother for making her feel that way in the first place – but the anger was bright and sharp and burned right through everything else.

 

She paused in her ministrations and just stared at her body; at the partially healed burns crawling up her arms and down her torso and legs. All of them were dark, aggressively so on her pale skin, and as she stared, she touched them lightly. She remembered her argument with Uma after they’d come back from the forest the first time, hurt, how she’d insisted that their efforts to figure out what was going on and stop it mattered, and she felt the panic inside of her finally dispel, replaced by determination.

 

“These are _not_ the scars of a worthless person,” she whispered, intently, if the tiniest bit uncertainly. “They’re _not_. What I – _we_ – did wasn’t worthless.”

 

Whether or not her mother would approve of the fact that she and her friends hadn’t waited to act didn’t matter – something had _needed_ to be done, so they’d handled it and Mal refused to feel bad about that.

 

She _refused_.

 

With a deep, steadying breath, Mal scooped more ointment out of its container. As she continued rubbing it onto her injuries, much more gently this time, she decided, for the moment at least, that she’d keep everything to herself – the trips into the woods, the Grudge, the injuries, the magic. If it wouldn’t make her mother proud, would instead make her view Mal as a convenient object to be used, then it was better off if Maleficent didn’t know.

 

Working her way down her body, Mal finally reached the last injury, near the bottom of one of her calves. Finishing up with it, she screwed the cap back on the ointment and grabbed the gauze. As she began wrapping, she suddenly felt the oddest sense of certainty that Uma would be proud of her for refusing to give her mother the opportunity to treat her like a thing to be used.

 

And, weirdly enough, though it made her throat feel tight and her chest feel heavy, something about that certainty also made her feel _better_.

 

She wasn’t sure what to think about that, exactly, but for the moment, as her injuries were slowly hidden away by gauze and as the time gradually slid by – getting closer and closer to the moment Evie and Carlos would be out of class and she could meet up with everyone again at the hideout and everything could start going back to normal after the chaos of the past couple weeks – she decided it was something she could put off thinking about for another day.

 

Right now? She deserved a break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can hit me up at lesbianfog.tumblr.com. I am very open to chatting about the decisions I made with this fic and the characters in general so, you know, don’t hesitate if you have questions or complaints or anything. And I’ll see you next fic, hopefully, whenever I get around to it ❀.(*´◡`*)❀.


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